'We should receive an adequate explanation'

MP for Ellesmere Port

THE start of a new school year is supposed to signal potentially exciting times for our children and their teachers as they return to classrooms.

So what do we get instead as a result of inaction by this increasingly chaotic government?

The worry for parents and guardians that their young ones might find themselves in one of more than 100 school buildings across the land where there is a danger of ceilings and other structures collapsing.

Headline-grabbing stories have highlighted fears about the emergence in some schools of RAAC – reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete – beginning to crumble in classrooms up and down the country.

Some schools have had to close altogether while in others there are sections of schools campuses with propped up ceilings which are cordoned off in the hope that children will not get into harm’s way.

This is not something that has come out of the blue. The problem was first raised as far back as 2018 when a ceiling in a school in Kent suddenly collapsed and in the following year an advisory body drew attention to the fact that a ‘significant risk’ existed in schools where this lightweight concrete had been used in the construction of buildings.

This risk was raised again in 2021 and it has taken until the Autumn of 2023 for anything to be done about fixing the problem.

Not that the issue is not just confined to schools – hospitals, prisons and other buildings which house large numbers of men, women and children are also potentially affected.

But back to schools, the disruption at the start of the academic year is appalling and in many cases wholly avoidable. We have just been through six weeks of summer holidays when work to replace RAAC concrete could have started.

And on a political level, Gillian Keegan MP, Secretary of State for Education, has done little to inspire confidence that she and her fellow ministers are on top of their brief on this subject. She has tried to place responsibility for this mess onto others and indeed at one stage she aimed to shift the blame onto local authorities for not looking after their schools better. It is has also been noted that when he was Chancellor Rishi Sunak cut in half the budget that would have been used for this work.

Gillian Keegan has not helped parents and local authorities with her initial refusal to publish the full list of affected schools and at the time of writing we still haven’t got any disclosure from the Government, not that my own dealings with them on this issue to date would give me any confidence it would be accurate.

We on the Opposition benches in Parliament are determined that we should receive an adequate explanation as to why it has taken so long to put remedial work into place in our schools.

Warnings were made several years ago by organisations including the Local Government Association that we were approaching this educational disaster area.

We now seek unequivocal guarantees to parents that all schools – including acadamies, free schools and nurseries – have been properly assessed and that children are in no way at risk and that schools will be properly financially supported to deal with all the costs arising from this.