Schools: RAAC

Lord Addington Excerpts

Tuesday 19th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am not aware whether there are leisure centres. The decision that we took in relation to schools reflected a number of factors. One was, obviously, the safety of pupils being paramount. Secondly, there was the speed with which we believed we could remediate most cases and, thirdly, the capacity and capability in estate management within the education sector. I am not an expert on leisure centres, but I assume that many will have dedicated expertise or have access to it.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, can the Minister enlighten us as to whether the Government have looked at whether specialist classrooms have been taken out as a result of this, and what effect that will have on the curriculum? For instance, science labs would be an obvious example. Also, in the creative subjects, if you have lost a theatre or an arts room where you were doing ceramics, you cannot complete the course. If the Government are finding this out, what process do they have to try to get some of that information in and, if they cannot do that, what arrangements will they make for people taking those exams?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

We have very good information on those issues. The noble Lord is right: it is extremely important that we establish that, and the Secretary of State was extremely clear in taking this decision that our operational response to support schools, which have been presented with a difficult decision at a difficult time in the school year, should be really well supported. For every school, we have a dedicated caseworker who co-ordinates all the strands of work that are going on to mitigate the RAAC. Then every school has a project director who is a technical expert; they will visit the school and work out with it the quickest mitigation plan. We have access to specialist classrooms and temporary classrooms for science. We have worked with the utility companies to ensure that the necessary energy, water and so on can be accessed, but there are some difficult cases. I am going on Monday to see a special school for children with profound disabilities. There are very significant requirements to make sure that those children also get access to the best education possible.