School Rebuilding Programme

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2022 Westminster Hall

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair today, Mrs Miller. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy) for bringing forward today’s important debate. I could not help but notice that the majority of MPs in the room are also MPs in the north of the country who desperately need investment in our education system.

The estates of many schools in York are in need of capital investment. Tang Hall Primary Academy, which was at the very top of the list in 2010 for Building Schools for the Future funding, is still yet to be rebuilt. The school had to introduce a new uniform that included hoodies and mittens for the children to be warm enough in their classes, but also recognise that in the summer the classrooms rapidly turn into greenhouses that are too hot to work in. It is schools like this that need to be rebuilt to ensure that our children get the best possible education.

We have Carr Junior School, where I have been shown the leaky pipes and the need for investment that has yet to come forward, or Millthorpe School, where they are constantly dodging pieces of masonry falling from the buildings. Many of our schools need that capital investment, but today I want to highlight the plight of All Saints Roman Catholic School, a split-site secondary school. The school provides an outstanding environment for children to learn, due to its special ethos and the dedication of the teaching staff. However, the school itself is another story altogether. Parts of the school date back over 300 years, as Mary Ward determined that girls should be able to access education. The Bar Convent museum adjacent to the school maps its journey from 1686, and part of that school is still in use today. It is well worth a visit to the museum, but clearly a school should not be a museum, it should not be a building site and it should not be unsafe.

When it comes to funding, the school is under the Catholic diocese of Middlesbrough but is the only school in York outside of the academies system. It therefore has segregated funding, which, due to its being the only school, is based within the diocese of Leeds. However, as it is the only school there is no flexibility around that funding, meaning that it cannot be joined with other funding to bring about capital rebuilding projects. Indeed, most of it is being absorbed by patching work, bringing in repairs. Patching in and of itself, however, is no solution at all.

There must be a whole new build for the school. The school has applied for the school rebuilding programme and has a new site where it could be developed. Further, it will recover much of the funding with the capital receipts from the sale of its current site. Therefore, on an economic basis, it really needs investment. The disrepair of the sites is really astounding. I have had the tour with the estates team at the school; it is taking ever more of their time just to try to keep the site safe, which is a major challenge.

Both sites have public access, one to a public cemetery in the middle of the school site. There is no segregated outdoor space, and in fact you have to pass through the school car park, which is the only play area for the children as well, among the teachers’ cars. That is completely inappropriate. The other site is on a public right of way towards the racecourse. Needless to say, the behaviour of inebriated racegoers poses a risk, as they urinate on their way back to the city through the school premises, so the safeguarding risks need to be taken into account in the programme for rebuilding schools. Teachers also constantly have to move between the school’s two sites down a snickelway at the back of the schools. Of course, in the winter dark, they often do not feel safe as they pass through those streets between lessons.

The school is old. Its masonry is falling off, and any repair needed is highly expensive. That is partly because the school is in a conservation area, in the sight of the York Walls; it has to reach an aesthetic standard to be considered appropriate, so a walkway repair that would normally cost about £5,000 would be £11,000 at the cheapest. The portico, which needs to be replaced, adds nothing to education or the school environment but costs the school £20,000. That is just patching work. We could also talk about the guttering system, which has to meet a particular standard, and other aesthetic features of the school because it is a heritage site.

I witnessed holes in the floor of the school gym—in fact, when I went around, there was a new hole where the feet of children playing sport had gone through. Where there are ceiling tiles, they have been falling as well. The cost of the floor repair alone is £60,000—even more for the whole gym. Clearly, this is just sending good money after bad, or bad money after good, to try to address the serious repairs that are needed.

The school needs new boiler systems. The fire alarm needs replacing as it cannot be heard throughout the site. The school is cramped; the corridors are so narrow that a wheelchair cannot pass through. There is currently a wheelchair user at the school, and they are really worried about how they will be able to access their education. The stairways are winding staircases where it is difficult to pass people—they were designed for servants. It is totally inaccessible and there is no facility for lifts in such a place.

There is much ingress of water in the school. As we will probably hear repeatedly this afternoon, flooding is common and there are a lot of residual plumbing issues. I have to say, the stench in some of those corridors turns one’s stomach, and unfortunately, that is the environment in which the children have to work. The dining facility is so small that each child can spend only six and half minutes at lunch, so they are not even getting the social space they so desperately need. The labs date back to the middle of the last century and are unsuitable for science today. The domestic science kitchens date back half a century and need replacing. Some of the teaching areas are in former aircraft hangars, which are too cold in winter and too hot in summer. Lessons take place in stables, no longer fit for horses, yet children learn there, including using steep stairs to the hayloft. Is that what the Government envisage as a suitable learning environment?

The sixth-form block will cost £40,000 just to be reclad. Again, because it is in a heritage area, it has to be either reclad or taken down. If it is taken down, there will be no sixth form at the school. Even to enter the sixth-form block, students have to descend a very steep path, which is dangerous when icy and pretty inaccessible. No one knows what the next challenge will be, but each morning the estates team worries about what the next cost will be for the school. None of that adds to the children’s education and none of them can realise the ambition that the school has for them.

It is not an environment conducive to learning. I cannot believe that there is a more urgent case on the Minister’s desk. The new build proposed would end those challenges and enable All Saints to focus on excellence, and the very special environment that teachers bring to pupils, many of whom struggle, to help them flourish. Just imagine what they could achieve if they had a school that was designed for the modern age. My plea is that the Minister takes back the story of All Saints and enriches the school rebuilding programme to replace the school with a new school facility that those pupils and teachers deserve.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michelle Donelan]

Obviously, I cannot comment on specific schools and, as the hon. Member points out, education is, of course, devolved. Nevertheless, I absolutely praise any educational investment and specifically investment in schools. I agree with her about the power of education and a good school, and I am sure that the Minister for School Standards would be only too happy to meet her to discuss exactly what we are doing here in England, to see whether there are any learnings that will help her.

Last year, we consulted on the approach to prioritise the remaining places in the programme, so that we could take account of the views of the sector in developing a longer-term approach to prioritisation. We wanted that approach to be fair, robust and capable of being consistent with comparisons between schools, while as far as possible minimising the burden on the school sector.

The public consultation started in July 2021 and ended in October 2021, and it took place alongside a number of consultative events. The consultation sought views on the objectives of the programme, the factors that should inform prioritisation, and the process and evidence of the data to be used. As part of that, we were keen to test how additional evidence of need could be gathered and assessed, and we recognised that data collected by the condition data collection does not provide a complete view of the condition needed within a school. For example, as it is a visual survey, it cannot be used to identify any structural weaknesses.

We received 205 responses in total from a wide range of stakeholders, including large representative bodies, as well as feedback from our online engagement events. I thank all Members and their constituents for contributing to the consultation. The primary goal of the consultation was, of course, to seek views on how we can effectively prioritise the funding available and, obviously, please all hon. Members in this House. We asked questions about the objectives of the programme, the school characteristics that we would consider to inform prioritisation, the delivery of the programme and the impact on individuals with protected characteristics.

The Department held a number of sessions with different stakeholders, and the consultation put forward three broad approaches to prioritising schools for the future programme. The majority of respondents—60%—put the lead approach as their first choice for prioritising school funding. This involved a light-touch nomination process, whereby responsible bodies can request that we consider a school’s condition data collection, alongside the ability to submit supplementary professional evidence of severe need that was not captured in that data. We have now implemented that approach.

We also consulted on how we would compare different schools that need to be rebuilt. This includes asking whether respondents agreed that we should prioritise schools based on severity of need, rather than simply on volume of need across the site. This is the approach that we took in the first two rounds of the programme, and it has the benefit of ensuring that the programme would not simply favour larger schools. We also plan to continue to prioritise schools with the higher intensity of need.

We have made our plans for future selection rounds based on experience of the first two rounds of the programme and the feedback from the consultation. Guidance for responsible bodies has been published on gov.uk, to support them to nominate schools for the programme and to provide additional evidence of severe condition, which is needed for the current round of specialist resource provision.

[Rachael Maskell]

I raised the issue of safeguarding in relation to All Saints School and the fact that there is public access to the grounds. How are such issues taken into account when considering the priorities?

[Michelle Donelan]

Of course, safeguarding is always fundamental when we consider school estate and schools in general. I am sure that the Minister for School Standards will meet the hon. Member as soon as possible within the next few weeks to discuss the particular issue of safeguarding. It is concerning that it has been raised in this House and it needs to be treated with sensitivity and urgency, so I will ensure that that happens.