Safety of School Buildings

Nick Gibb Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Schools (Nick Gibb)]

Let me start by welcoming the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) to her new post and congratulating her once again on her—in my view—promotion to that position.

This has been a debate on an important subject, but behind all the understandable concern is one key piece of information that the House and the country need. Until last week, the advice and guidance that the Department for Education issued to schools was that if RAAC was present in a building, structural surveyors should assess it, and that if it was graded as being in a critical condition, the building should be taken out of use. Where RAAC was assessed as non-critical, the advice was to continue monitoring it, but not to take the building out of use. What happened over the summer was that the Department was made aware of three cases—one commercial and two in schools, one of which was outside England—in which RAAC that had been graded as non-critical collapsed or failed. It had become clear that visual assessment alone would not definitively identify a cracked panel that was on the verge of failure.

Given that evidence, I say this to every Member of the House: “How would your decision differ from that of the Secretary of State and Ministers at the Department for Education on the question of whether to change the guidance to require all buildings with critical and non-critical RAAC to be taken out of use? What would your decision have been, given that evidence?”. Professional advice from technical experts on RAAC has evolved over time; indeed, the question of how to manage its risks across all sectors has spanned successive Governments since 1994.

The Department for Education systematically made the sector aware of the latest guidance from technical engineers in 2018, following a sudden roof collapse at a primary school. We published a warning note, with the Local Government Association, that asked all responsible bodies to identify any properties constructed using RAAC and to ensure that RAAC properties were regularly inspected by a structural engineer. In February 2021, we issued a guide on identifying RAAC. Concerned that not all responsible bodies were acting quickly enough, in 2022 we decided to take a more direct approach. We issued a questionnaire to the responsible bodies for all 22,000 schools to ask them to identify whether they had, or suspected they had, RAAC. Responsible bodies have submitted responses to those questionnaires for 95% of schools with blocks built in the target era and we actively chased the remaining responses.

In September 2022, we started a significant programme of technical surveys, with the DfE sending a professional surveyor to assess whether RAAC was present in those schools where the responsible body had responded to the questionnaire saying that there was suspected RAAC. There are more than 22,000 schools and colleges in England, and the vast majority of them are unaffected by RAAC. To date, 52 schools and colleges have put mitigations in place. Of the 156 schools in the list we published today, 104 are providing continued face-to-face teaching for all pupils. A further 20 schools have some pupils learning off-site and 19 have delayed the start of term by a few days to ensure that pupils can start of the term in face-to-face teaching safely on site. Only a very small number—four—have needed to move to remote education. They include St Leonard’s Catholic School in Durham, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy).

Every school and college that is impacted has a dedicated caseworker to help implement a mitigation plan. This will include using other spaces on the school site, in nearby schools or elsewhere in the local area until structural supports or temporary buildings are installed. We have increased the supply of temporary buildings, working with three contractors, and we have accelerated the installation of these. We have the support of leading utility companies to ensure that those temporary classrooms can be connected to the utilities and opened. In the small number of schools with confirmed RAAC that have disruption to face-to-face teaching, this has lasted only a matter of days in the past. We have also set up an operational hotline to ensure that Members of this House and other interested parties can, if appropriate, fast-track issues to caseworkers.

Since 2010, we have invested billions of pounds in school capital. We have created over 1 million more school places and opened over 650 new free schools, helping to drive up academic standards in some of the most disadvantaged parts of the country. We launched the priority school building programme, rebuilding or refurbishing 260 schools between 2012 and 2017. In 2015, we launched the priority school building programme 2, rebuilding or refurbishing 272 schools between 2015 and 2020. In 2020, the Prime Minister, when he was Chancellor, announced the school rebuilding programme to invest in 500 projects over the next decade for new and refurbished school buildings, prioritising buildings in the poorest condition. It is only this Government who have conducted surveys of the whole school estate, starting with the property data survey in 2012. We had the condition data collection in 2017 and now we are partway through the third survey of all our schools. It is only because of this work that we can target capital spending on rebuilding schools in the worst condition.

There have been questions from hon. Members on the details of the funding arrangements to support affected schools and colleges. To reiterate the words of the Chancellor, we will “spend what it takes” to keep children safe. That includes paying for the emergency mitigation work needed to make buildings safe, including alterations and alternative classroom space on school and college sites where necessary. Where schools need additional help with revenue costs, such as transport to other locations, we are actively engaging with every school affected to put appropriate support in place. We will also fund the longer-term refurbishment or rebuilding projects where these are needed to rectify RAAC in the longer term.

The hon. Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) complained about schools closing because of RAAC but, as I have said, only four of the 156 listed schools have actually closed. My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) is right to say that it is clear this Government are taking a zero-risk approach to the safety of buildings where new evidence emerges.

The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) and the shadow Education Secretary, the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson), both raised the issue of asbestos. All schools have an asbestos register and, if asbestos needs to be removed to put in place RAAC mitigation works, it will be removed.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) correctly challenged the Opposition to say whether they think the Secretary of State has taken the right decision, and they could not answer because they know it is the right decision. He asked important and serious questions about how RAAC was allowed to be used in the first place.

The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) seemed very cross on behalf of his constituents but, of course, none of the 156 schools on the list we published today is in his constituency or in Liverpool. My right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) raised the issue of costs, and we will cover all capital costs and, subject to need, revenue costs. Schools should discuss this with the DfE.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Laura Farris), in a brilliant speech, was right to quote Philip Collins’s article in The Times this week, setting out how standards have risen in our schools because of Conservative policies on the curriculum and on phonics since 2010, and because of all the work done by Education Secretaries since 2010, including my right hon. Friends the Members for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) and for Chichester (Gillian Keegan). My hon. Friend the Member for Newbury rightly cited all the new school buildings in her constituency, as we can also see throughout the country.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Shaun Bailey), in a passionate speech, was right to criticise the PFI arrangements under Labour’s Building Schools for the Future programme, which we are all paying for today. In their brilliant speeches, my hon. Friends the Members for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) and for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell) were both right to say that the Secretary of State has taken the right decision in the interest of safety.

My hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Simon Baynes) was right to contrast the swift action by this Government with the approach taken by Wales. That point was also made by the former Secretary of State for Wales, my right hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns). My hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild) was prescient, as always on so many things, in raising in this House, on a number of occasions, the issue of RAAC in the NHS. My hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Anna Firth) spoke about Kingsdown School, and I will raise the three issues she mentioned.

Under Conservative Governments since 2010, despite the challenges of managing the aftermath of the 2007 to 2009 banking crash and the state of the public finances we inherited from the previous Government, despite the huge financial challenges of supporting the economy and household incomes during covid, and despite the energy price hike as a result of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine—despite the massive financial implications of all these challenges—we have created 1 million more school places and invested heavily in improving the quality of the school estate. We are spending record amounts on schools: £59.6 billion next year, the highest on record in cash terms, in real terms and in real terms per pupil. Standards are rising, with 88% of schools judged good or outstanding today, compared with 68% in 2010. Maths standards are rising, with England excelling in international league tables, and the reading ability of our nine-year-olds is now the fourth best of the 43 countries that test children of the same age.

We put the safety of children and staff above all else. We have proactively sought out RAAC in our schools, more comprehensively than any other jurisdiction. We have monitored the growing evidence on RAAC, and we acted swiftly and with caution for the safety of children and staff at every step. When the evidence changed, we changed our advice to schools. We are supported and funding the repairs and temporary remedies that we need to put in place in the tiny minority of schools that have been affected. That is our approach, and I urge hon. Members to back that caution and concern about the safety of our children and school staff by voting overwhelmingly against this motion tonight.

Question put.