School Building Closures

Bridget Phillipson Excerpts

Tuesday 19th September 2023 Commons Chamber

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

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Education if she will make a statement on the number of schools affected by reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete and the impact of building closures on children’s learning.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Gillian Keegan)]

As I said in my statement to the House on 4 September, this Government are supporting affected schools and colleges to minimise disruption to education. I thank headteachers, staff, local authorities and trusts who continue to provide face-to-face education to their pupils.

Two weeks ago, we published a list of education settings with buildings affected by RAAC. Before I provide an update, I want to reiterate that our view is that parents and children should find out from their school, not from a list on a Government website or from the media. Our approach has always prioritised that, giving schools and colleges the space to focus on what is important: minimising disruption to education.

None the less, we recognise the public interest. On 6 September we published a list of 147 education settings known to be affected by RAAC. Thanks to the hard work of school and college leaders, all of those settings are now offering face-to-face education, with 126 settings offering full-time face-to-face education to all pupils. We have today published an updated list including a further 27 settings with confirmed RAAC. Of the 174 confirmed cases, 148 settings are providing full-time face-to-face education to all pupils.

As I have said before, we will do everything in our power to support schools and colleges in responding to RAAC in their buildings. Every school or college with confirmed RAAC is assigned a dedicated support from our team of 80 caseworkers. A bespoke plan is put in place to ensure they receive the support that suits their circumstances. Project delivery teams are on site to provide support, whether that is ordering or finding alternative accommodation options or putting in place structural solutions.

We will fund these mitigations, including installing alternative classroom space. Where schools and colleges make reasonable requests for additional help with revenue costs, such as transport to locations, those will be approved. We will also fund longer-term refurbishment or rebuilding projects to permanently remove RAAC, through capital grants or rebuilding projects through the school rebuilding programme.

I want to reassure pupils, parents and staff that this Government will do whatever it takes to support our schools and colleges, to keep everybody safe, to respond to RAAC and to minimise disruption to education.

[Bridget Phillipson]

Thank you for granting this urgent question, Mr Speaker.

Before I go any further, let me emphasise that the safety of children should rightly be the priority of every Member of this House. However, the question today is not simply about whether that should be our priority, but about the colossal shambles of a Secretary of State who, as we learned from the Education Committee this morning, did not merely sit on new advice about the safety of school buildings, which she received on 21 August, but did nothing for four days. And then she acted decisively—she went on holiday for the best part of a week. Some 10 days passed from the day she received the crucial advice to the day the headteachers were told to close their schools, causing chaos for parents.

Just a fortnight ago, the Secretary of State’s response to questions about the management of the Department’s own building was simple and proud, the motto she has made her own:

“nothing to do with me”.

She had done a “good job”, while others had been sat on their backsides. Does the Secretary of State still think that is good enough? More simply, even under this Prime Minister, weak as he is, and this Government, how on earth did she think she could get away with going on holiday rather than taking any form of action at all? Will she at last take responsibility for 13 years of failure, three weeks of chaos and the years stretching ahead of the children who are sitting under steel girders? When will all our children be back in their own schools and classrooms? Parents, families, staff and, above all, our children deserve answers, and they deserve better from this Government and better than this Secretary of State.

[Gillian Keegan]

I thank the hon. Lady for her questions. As soon as we had information, we took a decision in every case. When we first saw the incident in 2018, we took a decision and we put out new guidance and warnings. We put out new guidance in 2021-22. We started surveys directly in 2022, when the previous Secretary of State started to get more concerned about RAAC in our school estate. We then sent in surveyors directly, because the responsible bodies were not moving quickly enough.

Let me turn now to the initial advice. Three new cases emerged over the summer, and some were subject to advice, as the hon. Lady says, which came on 21 August. I instructed those involved to get more technical information. The last case is really what tipped us into making a decision. It was a very difficult decision—I am not sure the hon. Lady would have made it because Labour do not tend to make these difficult decisions, and the Labour Government in Wales have still not done so—because of the impact on children and because of the impact on our school leaders and teachers. The last case, which was in another school setting in England, took place on 24 August. We went to investigate that to see what had happened.

On my own decision, I went abroad because that was the first time that I could go abroad. I went abroad for my father’s birthday, knowing that I would still be chairing the meetings, which I did on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, and then I made the decision—as we had now made a decision— to come back from holiday immediately. My return was delayed by one day because of the air traffic control incident, so I got back to announce the decision on Thursday.

When I looked at the new case, I said that we needed to get technical evidence. The second thing I said was that we needed to operationalise this. I knew that this would be difficult. I did not want to put schools in a position where, if I put out a notice via the media or directly, they would be left with the problem. I wanted to stand up caseworkers. I wanted to stand up portacabins. I wanted to speak to utility companies to make sure that everything would be in place so that we could minimise the length of time that it took to put up those portacabins. I wanted to put more structural engineering companies in place, because I knew that we would do more surveys. I also wanted to make sure that we had a nationwide propping company, so that we could put the largely horizontal structural solutions in place to fix everything.

When we have to make a major decision, there is no point creating more issues than we need to. We need to operationalise that decision, which is what I decided to do. The time from the last case to the announcement was one week. That is probably one of the quickest decisions that most people have made in this House and we operationalised it, all while I was still working, as I always do.