Emails say 600 faculties may nonetheless have crumbling RAAC and never learn about it

Some 600 extra faculties may nonetheless have crumbling concrete ceilings and never comprehend it but, paperwork seen by the Mirror reveal.

And officers have privately accepted it’s prone to take “a number of years” to resolve the RAAC disaster. Some 231 faculties constructed between the Fifties and Nineties had been final week confirmed to have been constructed with low-cost RAAC – a bubbly sort of concrete that may collapse if it will get moist.

But as of mid-November, there have been nonetheless 612 faculties in England which had not been absolutely inspected for the substance, based on an inside Department for Education e-mail. While officers had nearly accomplished preliminary surveys of round 2,500 faculties by November, as many as 900 got here again with “inconclusive” outcomes.

Meanwhile, DfE officers are understood to have contacted the BBC, asking to cross-check the broadcaster’s listing of faculties with RAAC with their very own. Speaking in Parliament, Labour MP Emma Hardy requested Schools Minister Damian Hinds whether or not “it remains the case that the BBC journalists have more of a grip on this crisis than the Government?”

Mr Hinds didn’t deny the decision had been made, and mentioned: “We have a lot of people working on this and rightly so.”

Bridget Phillipson MP, Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary, mentioned: “It is unforgivable that parents are being met with a wall of silence about the scale of this Tory-made scandal and the safety of their children at school – it’s not clear the department for Education even knows just how bad this crisis could get.

“In who knows how many schools across our country, a generation of children are set to be failed by the Secretary of State’s career-defining incompetence.

“Gillian Keegan needs to stop patting herself on the back and come to the House of Commons to explain how she’s going to fix the mess that Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives have made of our school buildings.”

Initial college surveys contain engineers visually inspecting the ceiling supplies to attempt to determine RAAC. But in many faculties the ceiling panels are inaccessible with out additional work being achieved – and in some instances, asbestos removing is critical to entry the world.

Ministers had set a goal of finishing “further investigations” by Christmas.

Last week, the division added 17 extra faculties to the listing of confirmed RAAC instances, a few of them following secondary inspections. An e-mail was circulated to DfE officers serving to to deal with the RAAC disaster late final month, following up on a “milestone celebration event” on November 16.

Top officers congratulated workers on acquiring questionnaire responses from all at-risk faculties and authorities, and being 30 settings away from finishing the two,500 preliminary surveys. But not less than two of the remaining 4 milestones had been marked orange – with one marked purple.

As effectively as 612 instances that required additional investigation, the doc reveals simply 60 faculties had been informed what their “route to remediation” can be, out of 180 on the time which had been recognized with long-term rebuilding wants. And an extra milestone to make sure the vast majority of settings with RAAC had “medium term mitigations” in place by Christmas was marked purple.

The Officials wrote within the e-mail: “We are still very much planning for the RAAC emergency response to be over at Christmas but we all know that fully remediating or removing RAAC will go on for a number of years.”

“Nonetheless,” they added, “It is important to take stock and celebrate how far we have come to date.”

Attached to the e-mail is a picture of a mountain with six checkpoints. An arrow factors to the second “milestone”, on the high of the primary slope, with a observe studying: “We’re here!”

Dan Shears, GMB Health and Safety Director, mentioned: “GMB is appalled to learn that more than 600 schools have yet to have the presence of suspect RAAC confirmed. This must the be highest priority for the Government when children’s health and safety is at risk, yet Education Secretary Gillian Keegan said not a word on this when she reported to Parliament on 6th December.”

He added: “GMB has members working at many of those schools newly identified with RAAC. They perform crucial duties that include maintenances and caretaking; cooking; cleaning; and teaching support. They have the right to know when their schools will be made safe, and why it has taken to so long for this RAAC to be identified. Schools will shortly be closing for Christmas, and DfE must use this time to prioritise surveying those 617 schools, and to develop credible plans for urgent RAAC remediation. Our school pupils, GMB members in schools and their colleagues deserve nothing less”.

Shadwell Primary School in Leeds was one of 17 schools added to the Department for Education’s list of schools with RAAC last week.

The substance was found in September, but it’s thought there was a delay adding the school to the list because it was found in a building used by a privately run nursery and not elsewhere in the school.

“It was in the roof of a previous caretaker’s house where nursery children were,” said Stacey Booth, a GMB organiser who represents staff working in the school. There will have been small children in there.”

Shadwell Childcare operates in the old caretaker’s bungalow at the school. Leeds City Council agreed to fully fund a new roof for the nursery after DfE were unclear about whether it would be covered.

Deputy council leader Jonathan Pryor said he had written to ministers in early October asking for confirmation that works would be funded, but the reply he received did not address the question.

In a statement last month, Mr Pryor said: “As a result we are, once again, stepping in and funding these urgent works to ensure the children of Shadwell can move back into their building as soon as possible.”

Ms Booth added: “To find out this far down the line is a real worry. There’s not much money in schools as it is, and now it’s coupled with the worry and stress of knowing that the roof could collapse as well.”

Daniel Kebede, General Secretary of the National Education Union said: “The DfE has always been coy about how many schools were “at risk” from RAAC concrete or had “suspected” RAAC or “inconclusive” surveys.

“Certainly, this information has never graced the official tables which were supposed to be published every 2 weeks but which in fact have been slipped out on a far more ad hoc basis. “The Government needs to stop concealing information about this dangerous building material so that school communities can make a more informed assessment about what is going on.”

Paul Whiteman, basic secretary of college leaders’ union NAHT, mentioned: “It is pretty embarrassing for the government that we are now almost at the end of the Autumn term, and it is still adding schools to the list of those affected by RAAC – and so many surveys still ‘inconclusive’ we can expect that figure will continue to rise.”

He added: “We were promised urgency and immediate repairs, yet there are still schools waiting for mitigations to be put in place. Many schools are still waiting for temporary classrooms and buildings, with some members telling us that they are not expecting them to be ready for more than six weeks. This is simply unacceptable. Our children deserve modern, well-maintained school buildings to help inspire them to thrive and flourish, and their safety, and that of all school staff, should be non-negotiable.”

The Department for Education declined to remark.