School buildings to be shut

[Parapapampam]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-66673971

But they've know for years, if they didn't do anything...

Schools can’t just decide to close on their own-as I know from a local one last year who had similar concrete problems to those being reported. The DfE become heavily involved and you can’t close a school without their say so. Now, they are telling schools they must close.

On Sky this morning they said the DfE have said not all schools know yet and they will be phoning them today.

Does anyone know that if a school is part of an academy then it wouldn't be affected please? DS school is literally all concrete and built in 1967 but I haven't heard anything yet

My local school is closed.
They are handling it very well, no thanks to the DfE.

Apparently the issue was forced by a school which was felt to still be safe, which had a roof collapse over the summer. "helpfully" the government won't release a list of school names; individual schools have to tell parents themselves.

Where we are in the UK, East midlands, the schools are already back so brilliant timing. From what I've read, the schools closing now are the ones they've found so far, but work is still ongoing to check buildings.

@Sunflowersinthewind whether a school is an academy or not, if the building / room is unsafe, the school have to close it off. This affects council run and academy schools.

Why would being an academy mean a building doesn’t have concrete cancer?!

My school is having two new classrooms built. They started at Easter and it was still going on at the end of term. I don't know if it's finished not now.

It caused huge disruption. The biggest being that we couldn't use the playground at all for the entire summer term. It was used as the access point and vehicles and people were back and forth the whole time. It was noisy and can you imagine trying to teach a lesson whilst there is a mini digger right outside the window!

We had to have staggered playtimes so that the children could be outside on a strip of grass which was the only outdoor space left. Then the school had to pay for the lunchtime staff to be there for longer.

The whole school had to use a side door to come in and leave the building so we lost teaching time ferrying children back and forwards instead of being able to use the nearest door. Assembly was pushed back ten minutes for example to accommodate this. That's fifty minutes a week lost which is a whole lesson. That's your whole time for art.

About four times the water was cut off and we had no toilets. In a primary school! This affected the school lunches as well.

Someone said up thread that when an academy took over a school, they might have done their own checks (paraphrasing). Hence the question.

Depends when the school came into the academy? If school was deemed structurally sound at time of joining the academy, also don’t always have a choice if DfE forces academisation

The DfE can't force a trust to take on a school Most of the remaining maintained schools here are in buildings trusts don't want.

My daughters new school put out a message confirming the start day/time yesterday so I'm assuming they are fine despite being a flat roofed concrete school of the right time frame. Its the not knowing. It would be much more reassuring if the government just put out a list of the schools and what steps the schools will be taking

Schools are still being phoned and informed they need to close today.

Re "not much traction on the thread" experience seems to show that parents only start caring about what's going on in schools if they shut them.

@noblegiraffe

Yep, or they only start caring if there’s some loss of life in a school.

Many people refuse to listen to issues raised by @noblegiraffe as they think she hates being a teacher and hates children, whereas in fact she is proved right in many of the concerns raised. Maybe posters should learn to listen to her in the future.

Oh gosh yes, the amount of times the first few posts on a Noble thread are, "I knew this would be you" and "if you hate being a teacher you should leave". It's relentless, and I have no idea how she still continues to highlight issues and calmly explain problems to posters who just want to tear her down.

DfE say it will very fully funded

We shall see.

Often, the DfE's idea of what 'fully funded' means is very different to what the average person things it means.

The teacher pay offers clarified that much!

Fully funded in this case means the temporary structural support, I wouldn't even guarantee the actual building work when it does finally take place will be paid for separately. They will not cover the costs of any additional space that needs to be hired or any transport costs associated with it.

Most of our local schools are falling into disrepair for one reason or another, we can just add this issue to the list

Yes, let's not be under the impression that the RAAC issue is the only thing making schools dangerous.

It would take billions to get the school estate up to a safe standard because of general disrepair. And seeing how the govt has ignored this issue really doesn't bode well for how well they are managing the asbestos which the school estate is riddled with.

Likely the same way early years education and schools are currently "fully funded" when everyone knows its bullshit.

Just like the cladding issue.

it’s almost like our building regs aren’t good enough

You know that schools are still being built with Grenfell-type cladding, right?

I suppose there’s a difference between something being earmarked as needing replacing and it being in danger of imminent collapse. Sounds like this sudden collapse over the summer moved a lot of schools from the former category to the latter.