How will we know if RAAC is a danger to our own kids?

[verdantverdure]

If there was a critical risk to our children's lives if the Tories didn't repair 300-400 schools a year

And they didn't.

Then there are thousands of crumbling schools by now aren't there?

How will we know if our own children's school is or isn't one of them?

If it's a fee-paying school?

If it's a "Free School" or academy run by Tory donors is it safe?

Rishi Sunak said he'd diverted funding from deprived areas to prosperous ones didn't he? So are our kids safe if they go to school somewhere leafy?

Does anybody know?

@verdantverdure the knee jerk reaction is deciding to shut them all one week before they were due to open again.

It could easily be programmed and phased.

Wouldn't that have needed to start ten years ago though? (The programming and phasing) If they are at their end stage now, there's no time for that

Our school was inspected by ‘an expert’ for raac 6 months ago and found to have none . No way our head would have gone round with a hammer!! . We already know we have asbestos but it’s in a cupboard, under the floor and is intact.

I thought we only found out in 2011? Where is the thirty years coming from?

DDs school is independent. With the main building built in 1970s. There is RAAC which they have known about for ages and have a long term plan to deal with bit by bit.
Unfortunately now the government guidance has changed from a phased management to all out panic DD is back to marquees and such like and her start of year 12 has been put back 2 days and we await a full idea of what her education will look like. Possibly partly on line.
It's the escalation of perceived risk that's the issue. 2 ceilings fell in this summer despite the surveys of those saying the risk wasn't of imminent collapse.
Flaming nightmare
I also used to be a governor of an LA primary. It's so unfair to be berating school heads over unreturned surveys. They are not qualified to fill them in and I imagine budgets are so tight (they were when i did it and its only got worse) so paying for a surveyor (assuming you can find one) must be difficult.

The last government did try to deal with crumbling school buildings 15 years ago though didn't they, and then the next government cancelled it?

I agree with you OP, we're being fed the usual load of bullshit from this government who are busy looking like they're doing something but actually not doing very much.

Yeah I think the problem is for me that I don't trust the government to tell the truth.

Or handle the situation in a competent, safe and timely manner.

Once you know they were told in 2018 about the critical risk to life if they didn't fund 300-400 schools a year

And they decided not to fund them anyway...

It's quite hard to trust them with the safety of our children, isn't it?

The email from the school says that yes some of the school is built with RAAC but that it was pronounced safe in the last survey. I've asked when this survey was conducted and who is was conducted by now that we know that the current "survey" the government keep talking about is a questionnaire for head teachers who may very well not be experts in the safety of under-maintained flipping concrete.

Not worried. One child's school is a Victorian listed building so I wasn't particularly concerned at all. Plumbing in the loos is generally a work of flush it and hope, playground slopes to become an interesting ice slide in the winter... but I don't think the 50s, 60s and 70s got very near the place to inflict much in the way of architectural crimes - and the entire school moved out for 6 months a couple of years ago to renovate a lot of the building.

Other child's school moved out of their original buildings a few years ago - mainly because they were full of crumbling concrete. Current buildings they're in have had professionals in over the summer to confirm any areas of potential doubt - school is falling apart at the seams in general and a really tatty building because it's an interim measure while a new school is built this year, but it's not crumbly concrete.

I don't trust the Government - but I do trust the heads of the schools I have my kids at. If you don't have that confidence, you might need to consider if they're at the best school for your needs.

I trusted our old Head. She was amazing.

Im not keen on the new one yet.

@CoffeeWithCheese trust the head to do what though? Trust them to do as instruction by the department for education? Or trust them to do something different?

The last Labour Government was going to be implementing a multi billion plan to update schools. Michael Gove as an incoming Education Minister cancelled it. The DfE requested budget to fix 200 schools a year and we're promised 100. Sunak cut it to 50. Are we really trying to pin this on Tony Blair?
Kensington Council probably thought that the residents concerns about Grenfell were blown out of all proportion...until they weren't.
Like the Govt. press release said this morning, most schools aren't crumbling (FFS).

I'm horrified to see Keir Starmer on PMQs listing schools that were on the list to have work done in Labour's Building Schools For The Future 2004 that haven't been done yet.

The Labour model of PFI was flawed. Design was poor and lots of rethinks now need to be made. A better model of PFI for one!

If only another party had had 13 years to make improvements...

7000 schools still need properly checking evidently.

Anyone would think that asking head teachers to tap on the walls with hammers wasn't a valid safety check.

Love the idea that there’s hundreds of structural engineers who can do these surveys! There are some who can do this but the nerdy maths engineer designing huge buildings or bridges won’t be the people they need! It’s experience of this type of construction. It was used because it was cheap and a quick form of construction. Clearly “air” in concrete, which lets in moisture and corrodes the reinforcing in the uk weather, is not a great idea. However cost, quick build and ease of building with low skilled labour over-rode common sense.

The BSF programme did not look at RAAC or even the worst buildings! It looked at deprivation, gcse grades and fsm. The quality of existing buildings was not the only determining factor. Also in 2004, who was worried about RAAC? The LAs were in control of school buildings and had their own programmes for rebuilding and refurbishment. BSF was hugely expensive due to PFI. The LAs were sidelined after 2004 as their role was lessened. Lots of BSM decisions were political and only 35 out of 700 were built.

What we didn’t get was a proper evaluation of building quality. LAs had used RAAC and it’s become an issue because it’s not a long lived product unless maintenance is scrupulous. Plus checks for defects are required. In the meantime we have academies and the government stepping into the funding role. Except they cut funding. So too many schools seem to have sat around wringing their hands whilst paying their mat Chief Executives (in some cases) £150,000 plus. They do need to know all about their buildings.

And of course other sectors are also hurriedly getting their concrete checked tying up said structural engineers.

On our local Facebook page there's retired old codgers from the building trade who seem to know which buildings locally have RAAC because they worked on them.

If the old lads are correct it's a pretty widespread issue, particularly as we don't know which buildings deemed ok on their last check are not ok now. (Like the one that recently collapsed and precipitated all this.)

It’s not necessarily widespread at all. Plenty of buildings were built using brick and other construction methods. RAAC certainly wasn’t used by all LAs or others responsible for public buildings.

It’s fairly clear, after reading about the use of it, that many architects believed traditional construction methods were best but some needed a quick and cheap solution. Unfortunately these solutions were untried in the uk and were not guaranteed to last.

The maths is still bothering me.

If the Tories knew in 2018 that they needed to do 300-400 schools a year to stay ahead of the critical risk to life

And they have begun work on several dozen and finished four...

Then there must be considerably more than 130 schools that need doing rather urgently.

Given that it has been more than a year since 2018.

And what they have covered is only about a year's worth of the necessary.

How many can there be? 600 schools? 800 schools? More?

Our school was surveyed in 2018 by a surveyor. Everything structurally safe. The rest of the building is falling to bits though, having been renovated and rebuilt just 10 years ago by a shoddy contractor.

Not to be facetious but so was the one in Kent that collapsed wasn't it?

Hence the sudden panic.

I must admit it is feeling quite widespread with theatres and courts being shut and the government scrambling get 7000 schools surveyed properly PDQ.

And I keep wondering about prisons.

But mostly it's that the 300 400 a year that needed to be done back in 2018 because of a critical risk to life still need doing. Don't they?

And 300-400 per year adds up fast.

Is that 1500-2000 by now? Five years later?

No. Not necessarily. I suggest you look at the web site of the Institution of structural Engineers istructe.org for the best info. Just because a material was used doesn’t mean it is guaranteed to fail. There’s a lot of info here. The bigger issue might be who is qualified to look at it. Hopefully not a house surveyor!

The lack of RAAC expert surveyors is more than a bit worrying.

They are structural engineers. Totally different to surveyors. However the list is not complete. These are self declared people. There are others! But not enough for thousands of schools right now.