Risk of school buildings in England collapsing upgraded to "Very Likely"

[noblegiraffe]

It is now very likely that some school buildings in England will collapse, but the government will not tell parents (or teachers!) which buildings these are, and the situation is described as 'worsening' due to the lack of plans to rectify the problem.

The government reassures us with the line that 'there were no open schools or college buildings “where we know of an imminent risk to life”'

No imminent risk, just a very likely risk. Phew.

I knew that the government didn't care about children's education, but now it's clear that they don't give a shit about their physical safety either.

www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/worsening-risk-school-buildings-collapsing-says-dfe

I'm not sure PFI was really much better. Labour didn't really make any investments either.

I think PFI is better than a building falling down, personally. I admit I am a simple soul though.

The PFI schools in my town are way safer/nicer than the crumbling old ones.

This did happen at my school - but they built new buildings. The ramshackle ones are still in use. They aren't interested in repairing estates.

I work with buildings suffering from years of undermaintenance. A leak doesn't mean much, structurally. Crumbling really depends on what is crumbling, if it's not holding anything up it's annoying rather than worrying (unless the material that's crumbling contains asbestos). The worrying things are the things you can't see: lack of wall ties, weird 1960s extensions with things held up by a breeze block balanced on a brick, rotting floorboards, rusty structural steel.

When house building dries up due to no one being able to get a mortgage, it would be a pretty sensible economic decision to chuck some money at the construction industry to keep things ticking over. Why not do that via a massive school refurb programme? Admittedly spending money to boost the economy is not particularly appealing to the current government but they do like a handout to their donors and you never know who's been greasing the right palms.

Worrying isn't it. I read an article about it. My dd goes to a school built in 52, so the era that the risky buildings were built. I remember a news article about a wall in a Scottish school collapsing a couple of years ago.

Oops I accidentally quoted the op without thinking. Apologies to all 😁

PFI was probably the best of bunch of bad options. I think some of the contracts will have been badly negotiated because in the public sector we aren't cynical enough to spot the loopholes, but overall it needed doing.

I am also surprised we've not seen a bung yet - in fact I wondered if the 40 "new" hospitals was that, until it turned out they weren't actually doing it.

We are told where the asbestos is. So we don’t hang Christmas decorations from there

PFI wasn't much better than it being very likely that we will see a school building collapse soon, and it will be down to luck as to whether any children will be killed or injured as it goes?

The council buildings where I work sometimes have become structurally compromised due to rat activity. Recycling and waste is tipped out the bin lorries and packed in big lorries to be taken elsewhere. Massive rat population. Everyone knows it, just hope when it goes there’s no one hurt.

There was a scheme under the last labour government called "building schools for the future" that many of our local high schools were earmarked for. Two months after the control passed to the conservative/libdem coalition it was cancelled (by everyone's favourite Michael gove) and only schools that were already underway got built. They needed replacing then and that was 12 years ago. The situation is hardly going to have improved since then.

I know my building is both leaky and crumbly (and riddled with asbestos). What I don't know is if it is at imminent risk of collapse
This is very similar to where I've worked.

Lots of memos about not being able to put display boards up because of asbestos, wind blowing through gaps in the walls/window joins, rooms that are boiling in summer and freezing in winter, leaks, having to close rooms and offices due to leaks, but no plans to rebuild most of the sites.

We were supposed to get a new building under the BFS scheme too.

Now there are no plans for anything.

I'm not even remotely surprised. Our local hospital's roof is being held up by over 3000 steel girders , literally , and the government still won't give us a new building. It's not like the heath secretary doesn't know - it's one of his local hospitals😳

QEH ahoy. The thing I don't get is How they will have built them in time. It takes years to plan and build a new hospital and even with the struts they have a limited lifespan.

I don't know the scale of the problem in schools but I would definitely be asking what the school is constructed from if it's the right age.

So now, right before the start of term the affected schools are told to close 🤯

I don't know what needs to happen to get parents to care about this sort of thing.

Judging by the fact there were only 40 replies to this, yet widespread outrage in social media this morning, I deduce that schools closing is about the only thing needed!

Another school here that lost out when BSF was scrapped...

Honestly it would be cheaper to knock it down and start again than the repairs which we seem to be constantly doing, but long term planning isn't this govt's forte, is it?

Ah well. It's only the state school plebs who risk roofs falling in.

My DH's private school is affected...

It'd take years to get schools up to scratch I reckon.

As well as being too small for the school population our school has had leaking roofs for years, and have the tiles on the ceilings collapse, even during school time. Luckily never on a child or staff member. It's not the concrete here, just massive underfunding over the years meaning there simply isn't the money to do full repairs, mainly just patch ups.

And there will be many many schools in far worse situations right across the country.

If the conservatives do something about this, they won’t have enough money to make some tax cut bribes before the next election. What’s the point in solving a problem for Labour’s benefit? Their only hope of being re-elected is having some money to splash. They may as well take the risk, as it’s probably not their children in big concrete schools from the sixties.