Safety of School Buildings

Bridget Phillipson Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That an humble address be presented to His Majesty, that he will be graciously pleased to give directions that there will be laid before this House by 5 June 2023 a document or dataset containing the detailed school level data, including condition grades for individual building elements for all schools, from the latest Condition of School Buildings Survey.

This debate is taking place just over a year since the public, parents, school staff and children learned—not from a ministerial statement in this House but from a document leaked to The Observer—that many school buildings in England are in such a state of disrepair that they are a risk to life. It has been a full year and still the Government have not shared information with parents and the wider public about which schools, which buildings, and how much of a risk to life. Labour has tabled this motion to require Ministers finally to be up front with school staff, parents and pupils about the true state of our school buildings, the extent of disrepair, and their neglect over the last 13 years. Conservative MPs will have the opportunity to vote with Labour in the public interest and to do what is right by their constituents.

I am sure that the Minister will point to the condition improvement fund announced yesterday. At the third time of asking, a school in my constituency has finally received some funding so that it can at least comply with legal requirements on the boiler and the drains. Enabling schools to comply with legal requirements that the Government set out should be an absolute basic, but it has taken three rounds of bidding to get to that stage. I know that Members on both sides of the House will have had exactly the same experience.

The parlous state of school buildings is a national disgrace. It is shameful, and it comes from a Government and a Department who have given up on ambition for our children. They have given up on openness, given up on accountability, given up on standards and given up on improvement. It comes from a Government whose failed Schools Bill had little to offer schools other than ridiculous micromanagement from Whitehall. A Government who are out of ideas and short on ambition. A Government whose poverty of ambition has been failing our children for 13 long years. That poverty of ambition stretches far beyond the buildings themselves and right across our country, right over the course of lives and right over the whole of our education system.

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

I spoke to Jim Roebuck, the deputy headteacher of West Hampstead Primary School in my constituency. He told me that the school’s roof is in dire need of repair, the tarmac on the playground is dangerously uneven and a lot of the windows will not open properly, so the school has spent thousands of pounds buying fans for the summer months. He is clear that he is grateful for the investment that Camden Council has put into the school, but the reality is that if all of the repairs were to be addressed, that would cost thousands of pounds that the council does not have and the school does not have. The school is rated “good” and the teachers are excellent, but does my hon. Friend believe that children are fulfilling their full potential if there is no capital funding from the Government?

[Bridget Phillipson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who makes a powerful case on behalf of her constituents and the school concerned. I have heard stories like that right across the country. The difficulty we have is that we do not know the full scale of the challenge because Ministers refuse to publish the data. What we do know, however, is that the Government have a sticking-plaster approach, patching up problems and not seriously addressing the challenges that we face. We cannot even be confident that the money is being spent in the areas of greatest need, because the Government will not be transparent about that.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

The shadow Secretary of State is making an excellent speech. The gymnasium of Highgate Wood School is being patched up endlessly. Does she agree that it is financially illiterate to continue to patch up when a new build would be so easy and much, much cheaper to put in place?

[Bridget Phillipson]

Like my hon. Friend, I have seen countless examples across the country of the short-term approach the Government are taking. It is our children, parents and school staff who lose out. I am sure we will hear a lot more examples, including from those on the Government Benches, during the course of today’s debate.

[Shaun Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Con)]

One of my schools in Tipton is built under a PFI—private finance initiative—contract. I am sure the hon. Lady remembers those. Between the £40,000 bill for standard repairs or buying school books, what would she advise them to do?

[Bridget Phillipson]

My suggestion and the advice I would offer to the hon. Gentleman is to ask the Minister exactly what the state of school funding has been like over the last 13 years. His Government have been in power now for longer than the last Labour Government. He ought to take some responsibility for the state of schools in our country, not to blame others and not to deflect.

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is, in her usual fashion, making an excellent speech. Does she agree with me that one of the reasons Government Members will not release the data is that they know that over the last decade 50% of the capital budget has been cut through their ideological austerity agenda?

[Bridget Phillipson]

I think we probably all have reasons to reflect on why the Government will not be upfront about that. There are many reasons why that might be the case, but we have the Minister with us today. He can tell us why he said previously that he would publish this and why he has now changed his mind. I look forward to hearing him set out that case during the debate.

The lack of ambition is there for our children in their earliest years. The vision of childcare is little wider than a way of keeping parents economically active. There is nothing on the start we should give our children—the best start they deserve—or on the power of early intervention to change lives for the better and the difference that early years education makes in building a brighter future and a better Britain. There is nothing to close the attainment gaps that were already opening up and widening as our children arrived at school long before the pandemic even hit. And the answer to the childcare workforce challenge is as bleak as it is simple: to spread existing staff more thinly, to pile demand on to a system that they know fails providers, parents, families and, above all, our children.

The lack of ambition is there for our schools, too.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Headingley Children’s Centre building in my constituency recently closed due to roof disrepair rendering it condemned. The staff are still working in temporary accommodation, but the building closure has had a devastating effect on the excellent services provided by the centre, particularly for vulnerable children of trafficked women seeking asylum. It is the Government’s lack of investment that has led to the closure. Leeds City Council’s commitment to children has been exemplary. It made a significant commitment to funding another joint initiative with Public Health England to ensure that health visitors and midwives will be able to work from the new centre. Without a building, however, they will not be able to do that. Should the Government not come forward with capital funding for a new building?

[Bridget Phillipson]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful case for the impact we can all see in our communities when we bring together services to support children and families. We, all of us, know the difference the last Labour Government made around the Sure Start programme in making sure all our children got the best possible start in life, and the evidence around that is even clearer now than it was then.

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

I think it was last week that the figures came out on children’s reading and it was discovered, on international assessment, that our young children are the best readers in the western world. Does the hon. Lady welcome that news?

[Bridget Phillipson]

I looked very carefully at all the data that was published, and I pay tribute to our amazing teachers and school support staff who have been involved in making sure that our children get the best possible start in life. I will always be led by the evidence on what is right for children and what is best for their futures. The one area that, I have to say, did slightly trouble me was that, sadly, we see too few of our children enjoying reading. I think all of us want to ensure that as well as getting that really strong foundation, all our children leave school with a love of reading too. There is much there we can welcome and much to praise when it comes to the amazing staff in our schools, but I do not think any of us can be complacent, coming out of the pandemic, about the scale of the challenge that so many of our children and young people are facing.

There is a real lack of ambition for our schools. While the crumbling structures of too many of our schools are all too real, they double as a metaphor for wider problems. Our schools face a recruitment and retention crisis, as teachers and school staff leave the profession in their droves. At the same time, initial teacher training—the pipeline for newly qualified teachers into the classroom—fails to meet recruitment targets in key subjects year after year. It would be laughable were it not so tragic that the Prime Minister believes that ever more children can be taught maths for longer, with even fewer maths teachers. Perhaps the Minister can answer a question on that: if the Government are responsible for the education system, one in 10 maths lessons is already taught by teachers with no relevant post-18 qualification, they want every young person to learn maths until they are 18 and they have no plan to attract more maths teachers, how many more of our young people will end up being taught maths by non-specialist teachers?

It is not just maths. Too many young people face a narrow curriculum, missing out on creative and enriching opportunities. Too many leave school neither ready for work nor ready for life, but why? Because the wider school system is not delivering for our children. We have an accountability system that simply is not delivering the high and rising standards our children need. It is a system that tells us that almost four in five of our schools are good or outstanding according to Ofsted, in a country where tens of thousands of our children do not get the qualifications they need to succeed.

Either the Government have the wrong idea of what good looks like, or the system they have built is not working to deliver it. Some of our children get good schools, great teachers, rewarding opportunities, the opportunity to achieve, the chance to thrive and the knowledge that success is for them, but too many of our children do not get that start. Labour is determined to change that. Excellence must be for everyone—every child in every school, in every corner of our country.

Although the strengths and weaknesses of our schools are at least public, sadly, the state of their buildings is not. The strengths and weaknesses of so much of what goes on in our schools tend to be clear to parents. They can see when teachers keep leaving. They know when their children no longer get to go on trips to museums and when they are asked to pay for stationery or books. They can see that there are almost no music lessons. They know that their kids do not get the same chances for drama as others. But the fabric of the buildings is something that they generally do not see, because the Government are determined to shroud it in darkness. That cannot be right.

It is 13 years since the Government, led by the Conservative party, cancelled the ambitious programme of the last Labour Government to deliver modern, first-class schools for all our children. In those 13 years, not once has capital spending for the Department of Education matched in real terms the level that it was when the Government entered office. But the test is not the money that the Government put in but the state of the buildings in which our children learn. That tells its own story of how unwilling the Government have become to come clean on that.

[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. In my constituency, under the last Labour Government, Springwell Park Community Primary School, Rimrose Hope C of E Primary School, All Saints Catholic Primary School, Litherland High School and South Sefton further education college were all built, and we got rid of all of the temporary portacabin classrooms. All that was in addition to all the other significant investment by the Labour Government. Does my hon. Friend agree that Labour delivers—we do not just have words?

[Bridget Phillipson]

Like my hon. Friend, I saw the difference that a Labour Government made in transforming life chances through the fabric of our buildings with the transformation of the schools estate across our country, but not just that: lifting children out of poverty; more teachers in our classrooms; children better supported; and Sure Start programmes. That is the difference that the Labour Government made, and it is the difference that we will make once again.

It was in late October 2021 when the now Prime Minister announced as part of his spending review no fresh money for school maintenance and rebuilding, reaffirming 13 long years of continued underfunding of school capital costs. A decision not to fund is a decision to bear the risk. Although Ministers make the decisions, they do not bear the risks—it is not Conservative MPs or any of us in this Chamber. It is the children, their parents and school staff.

When things are not mended, they break; when buildings break, they cause damage. Of course, they do not need to collapse to cause damage. By the Department’s 2019 estimate, over 80% of England’s schools contain at least some asbestos. More than one in six schools complies with the law on asbestos, but not with the Department’s guidance. Almost 700 schools were reported by the Department to the Health and Safety Executive. These are Government estimates and Government decisions. The trade union Unison estimates that at current funding rates, it will take hundreds of years to fully remove dangerous asbestos from the schools estate. How on earth is that good enough?

It is not just asbestos. It is becoming clearer and clearer that there is a problem right across the schools estate, just as there is across the NHS estate, with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, which the Government describes as a “crumbly type of concrete” that is “liable to collapse”. In 2018, we saw exactly that, when the roof of Singlewell Primary School in Kent collapsed without notice, fortunately at the weekend. In the intervening five years, have we seen decisive action from the Government? Have they got a grip of the scale of the problem? Have they set out a timetable by which they will deal with these challenges, to protect children, parents and school staff? Of course they have not. They have circulated a survey, and that is it.

The Government could be matching the ambition of the last Labour Government by rebuilding schools the length and breadth of the country; modernising school buildings, so that they are fit for children to learn in and for staff to work in; raising aspirations and standards for every child, in every community; and giving children the first-class facilities and education that they deserve. Instead, the now Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), cancelled Labour’s Building Schools for the Future programme, a botched decision about which even he now admits that mistakes were made. Since then, the revolving door of Education Secretaries have failed to get a grip on the condition of our schools estate, allowing too many buildings and schools to fall into the state of disrepair we see today.

Our motion today is simple, but it is extraordinary that we have to bring it to the House in this form. In May 2021, the key findings of the Government’s condition survey revealed the alarming state of school buildings. In May 2022, an internal Government document was leaked to The Observer newspaper. It revealed that many school buildings in England were already in such disrepair that they were a “risk to life”.

In July 2022, over a year after the summary report, the Minister said in answer to a parliamentary question that the Department was still not committing to a date for publishing the underlying buildings condition survey data. Later in 2022, Ministers had changed their minds. They said it would be published “later this year”. In December 2022, the Minister for Schools said it would be published “by the end” of the year.

Buried in the Department for Education’s annual report, published in December, we read that a revision of the departmental risk register has moved the risk level of school building collapses to “critical: very likely”, after an increase in serious structural issues being reported. The information was not published by the end of 2022, nor was it published in January 2023. February 2023 came and went: nothing. March 2023 came, and again Ministers were not coming clean. April 2023: again, nothing. And here we are in May, two years on from the summary data being published, and there is nothing at once public and specific about the risks and needs of individual schools. What is there to hide? Why will they not come clean with parents and the public?

Concern about the state of school buildings is not limited to Opposition Members but shared across the House. Conservative Members have pressed their concerns, not merely privately but in the Chamber, directly with Ministers, about schools in Norfolk, Dorset, Lancashire, Stoke-on-Trent and Essex. Across our country, schools are crumbling. Some of them are dilapidated, some are rat-infested, and the Government will not tell parents where they are, how bad they are or how bad the issue has become.

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is a waste of school resources to have to keep bidding for funds for important things such as central heating? The Joseph Leckie Academy in my constituency was allocated funds under Building Schools for the Future but it has to keep rebidding for them.

[Bridget Phillipson]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point about how we spend public money and how we spend it wisely. Sadly, what we have seen all too often is a sticking plaster approach, as she says, where short-term measures are taken even though in the long run the schools are sometimes beyond repair. Expecting schools to go through this process all the time is not an effective use of public money, but alongside that, we cannot be confident that the money is always spent in the best possible place or where there is the greatest need because Ministers will not tell us where the problems are.

I know that the Minister wants to talk about the schools in which the Government have invested, not those they have not; about the few repairs that they have done, not the many that they have not; and about the announcement that they made yesterday, not the one that we need today. Let me remind Members on both sides of the House of what Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, has said:

“This is money allocated through an annual bidding programme to address significant needs in terms of the condition of school and college buildings and is most certainly not an example of government largesse.”

He went on:

“It is the bare minimum and nowhere near enough to meet the cost of remedial work to repair or replace all defective elements in the school estate in England”.

Rather than telling parents to be grateful, the Minister should come clean about the schools that are not being repaired, the buildings that are failing, the risks to our children, parents and school staff and the delays that they are enduring while the Government drag their feet. So far this year, the Department has published a list of 1,033 successful bids, which is 375 fewer than in 2022-23. I am always glad when a school gets the repairs it needs, but the story is not the schools that have been repaired; it is the ones that have not—or that have, but after goodness knows how long.

The wording of the motion presents Conservative Members with a simple choice: between their constituents and their Government; between openness and secrecy; and above all, between party and country. The choice is simple: a vote, in the public interest, to tell parents, young people and school staff what the Government know about the safety of their schools; or a vote with Ministers to keep that information hidden. I commend the motion to the House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

As I am sure colleagues can see, this is a well-subscribed debate so I might have to put on a time limit. I would like to advise that it would be worth aiming for a maximum of six minutes to start with. Depending on the opening speech from the Minister, I might have to put an actual time limit on, but my advice at the moment is to start at six minutes.