School closures due to crumbling concrete

[HoliHormonalTigerLillyTheSecond]

JFC you are kidding me?!

https://amp.theguardian.com/education/2023/aug/31/english-schools-told-to-close-buildings-made-with-crumble-risk-concrete]

Before you go off on the - this is NOTHING to do with the schools themselves; they received an email after it was in the news.

There were a few threads on this last night.

The timing is shocking.

Headteachers must be despairing - they've been begging for funds to rebuild/mend schools for years....

More disruption for the DCs after covid & strikes.

V unlikely the problem only affects 156 schools.

I was responsible for 120 schools in one inner city Council (there are 350 Councils , the numbers are potentially petrifying ) We didn’t even have up to date floor plans for most of them. Not a scooby ofwhat they were built of.

Govt have two choices

1. widespread school closures of schools built between 1950s and 1990s when RACK was commonly used
2. shut down the debate by claiming they have none invasive methods of not disrupting schools while correcting the problem.

Not great either way. I one had to reprovision ONE school over night after a huge fire. It was really difficult. No pupils got full time teaching for months. We happened to have a recently closed school we could use and it was still a nightmare.

multiple school? Good luck

So where is the list and when are they releasing it ? Honestly the chaos in public services at a national level is beginning to break me. DC going back next week, Y11 students for this year who had a dreadful time during covid in Y7 when they just started and had to go online... and now there is this on the horizon along with no knowledge shared with parents. If anyone knows which schools are affected it would be good to know now.

Surely they're better to close them rather than risk them falling on someone.

Obviously the notice isn't ideal, but they've clearly done a risk assessment, deemed there is a risk and are acting on the information.

Why on EARTH are they just dealing with this at the beginning of term?! They must have known about it for years.

@NC523 oh don't worry I most definitely blame the government!

Please don't presume my thoughts.

They must have known this was looming for years (didn’t Gove put a stop to the Building Schools for the Future thing?)

I can remember being at school in the 90s and everyone knowing that our school “was supposed to be a temporary school for 25 years but still hadn’t been rebuilt” (in quote marks because I can remember discussing it but have no idea how we knew or how accurate it was).

I’m guessing the big new academy chain schools, and the much older Grammar / Church schools will be fine, but the older comprehensives are going to be affected.

I'm just wondering if parents have been informed with the schools in question yet. Our school was top of the list for improvements when the original scheme was scrapped. It announced we have funding for updates to start during this year that wil be completed by 2026 but wouldn't be surprised if ours was in danger now, or bits of it.

Makes me so pissed off. Why is substandard quality ok for our kids? I truly hate Tory Britain.

@Russooooo they’ve know there was an issue since the 1990s. They also knew there was a major issue in 2018 when part of a school in Kent collapsed. They did nothing useful.

Honestly the chaos in public services at a national level is beginning to break me. I’m right there with you.

Welcome to Tory Britain. The railways are too expensive to use, you can’t get an appointment to see a medical professional, they’ve privatised the hell out of everything. And now this. Enough!

Tories scrapped the school building renewal programme in 2010. This is not new - it's just another fuckup caused by an incompetent and self centred government who only care about feathering their own nests unless there is no alternative.

I'm just wondering if parents have been informed with the schools in question yet.

Unlikely, as not all of the schools have even been informed they need to close.

But Mr Gibb also admitted that not all schools have been contacted yet, although "the vast majority have".
He said: "We've been calling them yesterday, but there's a few more that we're calling today, and those schools are now talking to parents about what's going to happen in their schools."

Source From Sky news

Tory Britain. Literally crumbling before our very eyes.

The level of decline and chaos under this government has been extraordinarily shit.

I have a Y11 returning next week. Her secondary experience has been utterly shit. Hope this isn’t the next thing for her.

This refers to Local Authority built schools between the 1950s and 1980s. The problem was flagged up in 2018, but since it was known, there doesn't seem to have been any planning of essential rectification work. Contractors and materials should have been organised ready to arrive on site when schools finished in July, and subject to penalty clauses if they failed to complete by September.

Contractors and materials should have been organised ready to arrive on site when schools finished in July

The timeline is:

2018: Primary school ceiling collapses in Kent. If kids had been in the building at the time (it was the weekend), there could have been fatalities. It is clear that RAAC is actively dangerous and poses a risk to life and limb.
.....
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Dec 2022: The risk of school building collapse is upgraded from critical to very likely

March 2023: Schools are sent a survey asking if they have an RAAC in their buildings

June 2023: The DfE sets up a call centre to phone schools asking why they haven't filled in the survey. Answer "Do I have RAAC? No idea"

Last of week August 2023: Some schools who do know they have RAAC are contacted by the government and informed that they have to close immediately because their schools are too dangerous to open.

Answer "Do I have RAAC? No idea"

Yep, that's a huge part of the problem, many schools just don't know. Unfortunately I suspect the list of closures is only going to get longer over the next few days / weeks.

I seriously think people should be rioting on the streets, I just cannot get over how bad Britain has become and I can’t see it getting any better even under a new government. I don’t know if our school is affected yet but I do know that we couldn’t cope with a return to covid style learning - my children were utterly failed during that period.

I’ve a kid going into Y11 next week, I’m so worried his school will shut. How much more crap is this Y11/y12/y13 cohort expected to take.

The schools question is obviously pressing, but I was wondering where else RAAC might be used? It can't just have been schools?

Anyone who knows this sort of thing know?

It's also an issue in hospitals and other public buildings.

An expert who looked at the schools issue has now called for an urgent review of social housing to see if there's a risk there too.

The government said 'not our problem, it's up to the building owner'.

https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/urgent-thorough-inspections-required-to-establish-risk-of-crumbling-aerated-concrete-in-social-housing-82938

No doubt the Tory Party's mates will have grabbed the over inflated contracts already! 🤬

All kids have been horribly affected by their schools closing. It's disgusting

The BSF scheme was a missed opportunity.

The issues with RAAC have been known since the late 1990s.

There was no survey done of schools (and other public, let alone private, buildings) then, and BSF was not in any way targeted at removing/reinforcing or doing whatever else in needed to make schools safe. Which is a shame, as there was then the money to do it.

I've been wondering how much university buildings are affected (big post-war expansion) and halls of residence