Gillian Keegan: how’s the ‘hot mic’ thing gone down with you?

[Crinklycut]

For my part, I don’t think it was very ministerial, and I do wonder how No. 10 all talk to each other these days (do they just swear all the time?) BUT she is a bit right, isn’t she?

The DfE have finally acted to make the public aware that their children are not safe in school. That’s more than anyone else in the Conservative party has done since they cancelled ‘Building Schools for the Future’ in 2010 and during their 13 years of government.

So how’s it gone down with you?

Has she resigned yet?

Absolutely agree noble and what’s more I did my back to school asbestosis training today and it was pretty damn clear that we were to steer clear of all three kinds - don’t fancy the surveyors’ jobs given the parlous state of schools atm

edit - sorry didn’t quote noble properly - but to be honest, what she said mostly serves as she writes constant sense about education.

No, she has instead threatened schools who have not sent their RAAC questionnaire back by Friday with naming and shaming.

https://www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/dfe-schools-deadline-raac-survey

With this, she has basically confirmed that the DfE don't know what's going on with RAAC.

"The DfE is likely to be required to publish information about schools which have RAAC, schools which do not, and schools where there is still uncertainty."

This, I suspect, refers to Labour pushing a vote in parliament to force the list to be published.

Remember that both her and Gibb have been saying that the list will be published when schools have contacted parents etc - clearly just buying time.

Politically the additional focus has been on acadamies and free schools.

To drive the Conservative ideology, we have at least two new schools that are not needed. DfE pushed for these against local school leader wishes.
The opening of them has resulted in local maintained schools having to drop their admission numbers and make staff redundancies due to falling roles.
The opening of these schools has divided the same pupils across more schools.
Money spent on large new builds to further the academistation ideology, money which would have been better spent ensuring children are safe through maintaining the schools already open.

Keegan can’t resign until the PM has stated he has complete confidence in her and denied that she will be resigning.

She clearly doesn't understand that the very well-established constitutional principle of Ministerial Responsibility means that the buck absolutely stops with her, even if it's not her fault and regardless of anything she may or may not have done.

That and she's a raging ignorant narcissist.

Yep, it's the ministerial equivalent of Il bacio della morte.

I feel a bit bad about saying that Labour aren’t on top of this issue after reading this:

https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2023-05-23/debates/DBFA5A9B-A6E5-4D39-93D4-1AFB02AE750F/SafetyOfSchoolBuildings

It makes for quite moving reading.

I would like to see Gillian Keegan getting off her arse and hitting some aerated concrete with a hammer, however. See how many schools she could whack in 24 hours. We could sponsor her, like when Joe Wicks did his fitness for Comic Relief, and use the money raised to rebuild schools.

For some reason I read it as how many schools can whack Keegan with a hammer.

I read it as hitting some aerated concrete with her arse.

It would save schools buying hammers.

Thrifty

She was almost laughing when she claimed that she "would like to apologise" for her outburst.

She was @mibbelucieachwell

What the hell was that about? Hardly appropriate.

I think there’s a few head teachers that would be quite happy to do that right now.

Interesting, Gillian has pissed off the rest of the cabinet by her 'cautious' approach to RAAC which means that other departments are now under scrutiny as to whether they're going to take the same approach with hospitals, military bases, social housing etc when they just wanted to sit on their arses and do nothing.

https://news.sky.com/story/education-secretary-under-fire-for-opening-pandoras-box-on-concrete-crisis-12955766

The argument is that schools have to take a more cautious approach than other public buildings because they are "unusually crowded" and don't have easy access to experts who can monitor the RAAC.

Which surprised me, as I thought headteachers were totally trusted to take that role.

Bring back local authorities! Their architects designed all these schools in the first place! They, in fact, paid for them with long term loans back in the day.

Lord Adonis (labour) wanted free schools and academies. They are beholden to central government. The Heads love their power. They think they can do everything on their big MAT salaries. Turns out they didn’t do structural surveys for RAAC. They were told schools might have it. If you are responsible for school maintenance, you cannot say it’s anyone else’s fault that you didn’t do a survey,

It’s true to say not all schools will have RAAC. Some might even be sturdy brick built buildings! I don’t have huge sympathy for MATs. They took over the buildings. They have responsibility for H&S. They wanted autonomy. So why didn’t they employ a structural engineer for a survey? They could have done.

One thing schools might learn from this is that heads are not structural engineers. They don’t know everything but should know when to take advice. My DH is a structural engineer and his company has a contract with the LA here for school structural issues. No school involved here is a LA school. All (very few anyway) are academies. They preferred to deal with the government. Look where it’s got them.

Pretty sure the government forced secondaries to become academies. It wasn’t exactly a choice on behalf of the schools.

So why didn’t they employ a structural engineer for a survey? They could have done.

Maybe they were a bit short of cash. I hear some bastards cut their funding. 🤷‍♀️

I think lots of schools have had surveys that seemed to be fine and thought they were fine but they're now realising that those surveys didn't specifically look for RAAC which is apparently a sneaky bastard and they are suddenly second-guessing those surveys.

Yes.

Indeed, Ofsted, on behalf of the government, is suspected have specifically downgraded some remaining LA schools in order to force academisation against their wishes.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/gillian-keegans-department-gave-1m-30871695

They could probably have used the £1million they gave to a firm linked to Keegan’s husband.

Most of our local schools are in MATS. The Government decreed a few years ago that all schools should be in a Trust. The schools started the process so they could choose which Trust to be in rather than be allocated one. Part way through the process the Government changed their mind (surprise surprise). As schools had started the process and costs had been incurred they continued to form a MAT.

The Government in their last white paper decreed that all schools should be in a MAT, the larger the better.

And it wasn’t MATS that built these shoddy schools

This is all completely true but when forming the trust/ taking in new schools you’d have thought part of due diligence would be checking they weren’t going to fall down in the next 10 years. And then surely the buildings should be regularly inspected?

Instead the executives took their big salaries and left others to pick up the mess.

I don’t believe that if the buildings had been properly inspected it wouldn’t have been picked up.

But in terms of teachers they teach and can’t possibly be held responsible for this stuff. I know a lot is shoved onto teachers but surveying 🤔. School governance is another thing though, they should be bringing in the right experts.

I don’t believe that if the buildings had been properly inspected it wouldn’t have been picked up.

Then how come it doesn't seem to have been picked up when the DfE hired experts to inspect all schools between 2017 and 2019 for their School Conditions survey?

The detailed school-by-school dataset for which Nick Gibb promised would be released before this summer holiday just gone, and which hasn't been published.

Who knows? We aren’t builders so don’t know what they were looking for. Knowing the DFE it would have been very tightly controlled. But this is just idle speculation really.

If we are honestly saying that structural engineers were unable to identify the problems then it lies with that industry and their practices.