Safety of School Buildings

Simon Lightwood Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Simon Lightwood (Wakefield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I will try to speak quickly, Mr Deputy Speaker. In this place, we all want to ensure that children get the best start in life, and a key part of that is their education at school. That is why I am pleased that Labour has brought this motion forward today. Indeed, one of the most rewarding parts of being an MP is visiting our schools and colleges. I enjoy meeting students and their teachers to hear about the achievements of our fantastic local schools in Wakefield, Horbury and Ossett, but the same issue is raised with me time and again: the state of their buildings.

Earlier this year, I visited Highfield School in Ossett, which provides specialist education for pupils from 11 to 19 with severe learning needs. They do a fantastic job in difficult circumstances, but the conversation quickly drifted on to their dilapidated school buildings, including the cost of removing asbestos, with staff describing the school as “riddled” with it, the inability to attach things to a wall for the fear of releasing asbestos fibres, and rising energy and equipment costs because of poor insulation. An assistant headteacher, Mrs Hickey, described numerous occasions on which water has seeped into the roof space, causing ceilings to collapse. With the roof leaking, and no spare classrooms available, some children had to be sent home for the day.

Every day of learning lost has consequences, especially for those with special educational needs. The Department for Education’s May 2021 condition of school buildings survey revealed that it would cost £11.4 billion to replace and repair all the damage in our schools—a figure that must have risen since. NASUWT research shows that at current funding rates, it would take over 400 years to fully remove asbestos from our schools, never mind tackling the countless other structural issues. That is damning.

By some strange coincidence, the Government yesterday released the details of the new round of the condition improvement fund, which will provide £456 million this year, but it is a drop in the ocean and simply offers too little, too late. While I am grateful that four schools in my constituency will receive some limited funding, mainly to replace leaking and damaged roofs, it is far from the long-term solution we need.

I notice, too, that half of my wards—Wakefield East, North and West, which are some of our most deprived communities—will not receive a penny of this money. In fact, over the past three funding rounds, only one school in the inner-city wards has received any funding at all.

This matter is not party political; the Department for Education was the one to sound the alarm bells. In its own annual report, it said:

“There is a risk of collapse…in some schools which are at or approaching the end of their designed life-expectancy”.

The risk level for potential collapse had been escalated to “critical—very likely”. Let me repeat that: the Government judge that it is “very likely” that some blocks in some schools could collapse. That is not all: the Department will not even tell us which schools are at risk of collapse. Is it not right that parents, pupils and teachers should know whether the school is safe for children to learn in? Should that not be a bare minimum? Anticipation was not, I am afraid, the emotion I was feeling during the Minister’s speech—I was angry, concerned and exasperated. As a parent, I want to know whether my school is safe, as do parents across the country.

It is has taken this debate, brought by the Labour party, to call on the Government to let us know which schools are at risk of falling down. I cannot believe I am having to say that. Schools need serious investment, just like they received under the last Labour Government. In contrast, only one school out of 47 in my constituency is on the Government’s school rebuilding programme. Capital funding in education in real terms is now half what it was when Labour left office. That was clear in December, when the Tories identified just 400 schools for rebuilding work out of more than 24,000 schools in England.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

Order.