More than 100 schools told to close buildings over safety fears

DGD's old school in Essex is also on the list.
She now lives in Devon, (where miraculously there are none!), but her little friend who is holidaying here from Essex only found out last night.

I get cross because haven't children already suffered enough with their education?

It’s a terrible situation for children and parents, especially those in affected areas and a shocking worry to them.
Many children have really suffered, from toddlers getting late starts due to Covid to exam results fiascos.
I’m constantly genuinely amazed that youngsters cope so well in schools and am constantly annoyed that they have to.

I should add the same goes for teachers too.

And do we believe that only publicly owned buildings will be at risk? I suspect that there will be residential developments at risk too, though nobody is suggesting this. What appeared to be a lightweight but useful material has proved to have a short life which nobody suspected, though building surveyors have apparently been warning about the risk since the turn of the century. It is very alarming.

ImogenMac

I have clearly stated that the responsibility of building maintenance and repair lies with Local Authorities or Metropolitan Boroughs.

I have also given an idea of some of the tasks and responsibilities of a Caretaker/Premises Manager, none of which has included any buildings repair or surveying.

No school, however small , is allowed by the Local Authority or Metropolitan borough to operate without a designated Caretaker/ Premises Manager.

There would be extremely serious consequences if they did.

That is not to take away at all from the huge, if not impossible, jobs of Heads and Staff to manage with all the increase of demands on them while resources are continually cut and buildings fall into disrepair or worse.

WWMk2 sums it up perfectly.

I'm sorry you are completely wrong no small school can afford the services of a caretaker these days. Could you post a link or some information about the particular legislation which you say puts any requirement to employ anyone in the role you describe?
As I said mostly the Head and senior staff take on the responsibility for the maintenance and upkeep of the building, often with help from the Governing body.

I believe there are joint 'Site managers' as they are called here, for clusters of smaller schools.
The Trustees of Academies have responsibility for financial affairs, or so I believe; the Head responsibility for the day to day running of the school, hence the ambiguity of who does what, and when. The Trust responsible for our local school is based about 100 miles away.

ImogenMac

All schools, including Academies and Independent schools are required to adhere to certain legal responsibilities , much of which applies to this thread and indeed all schools.

But they're not the responsibility of local authorities and councils, which is what you claimed.

Casdon It could be that Essex built a disproportionate number of new schools during the time period affected and used a certain style of building. Essex experienced a huge population growth at the time, as people moved out of London into more (what were at the time) leafy areas, so new schools were needed. I spent most of my career teaching in Essex schools and most of them were built at about the same time and used the same style of building.

PS. That's just a hypothesis.

Essex has a few "new" towns such as Harlow, Basildon, Etc which presumably accounts for a high percentage of new buildings such as schools.

Has anyone mentioned Social Housing? My daughter lives in a council maisonette and has had problems with the roof for 14 yrs, her maisonette has a flat roof which is actually the flat aboves garden/patio space. She got a message this morning from the council rapid response repair team saying they are coming next week to carry out repairs, so she knew nothing and text back to ask what they were repairing and the answer was they were a new company to this council and hadn’t received the full report of works yet.
It seems very coincidental and they never normally contact at weekends. I’m very suspicious this is a survey on the qt to see if RACC is the problem.
Am I being paranoid?

growstuff
I believe you are consistently misconstruing my posts so I am ignoring you , in the absence of a block button.

growstuff

Casdon It could be that Essex built a disproportionate number of new schools during the time period affected and used a certain style of building. Essex experienced a huge population growth at the time, as people moved out of London into more (what were at the time) leafy areas, so new schools were needed. I spent most of my career teaching in Essex schools and most of them were built at about the same time and used the same style of building.

PS. That's just a hypothesis.

Possibly, although in our area of Wales, schools which were only opened in the 1980s are being replaced with new buildings.

HousePlantQueen

Essex has a few "new" towns such as Harlow, Basildon, Etc which presumably accounts for a high percentage of new buildings such as schools.

It's not just the new towns, but existing towns such as Colchester experienced a huge growth in population in the post war years.

ImogenMac

growstuff
I believe you are consistently misconstruing my posts so I am ignoring you , in the absence of a block button.

That's your choice! I'm not misconstruing anything, but you keep saying that local authorities and councils are responsible for building surveys, when they're not.

paddyann54

CASDON and that may be the case but the programme of new and refurbished schools here show a willingness to deal with a problem and NOT just announce a new initiative that never happens as does with your government .
Similar to our affordable homes.over 120 thousand new homes in the same timescale ,over 70% of them not just affordable but social or as we call them COUNCIL houses.Thats because we have a government which is delivering on manifesto pledges and councils who dont USE their housing budget have it taken off them and given to councils who do build the right houses ....for people who need them.My area has hundreds of lovely new homes scattered across it .Dont believe the media spin about Scotland suffering under devolution ,nothing could be further from the truth

Thirty five schools identified with problems with RAAC so far in Scotland.

Over 10% of Essex schools have now been identified as affected. If that figure really is replicated throughout the country, it's a huge problem.

Michael Gove scrapped the £56bn school building project, inherited from the Labour government, and that was set to replace every single RAAC school in the UK.

He then replaced it with nothing.

Apparently the timing wasn't great because July was the wettest on record this year.
If excessive water gets in, the concrete soaks it up and becomes more vulnerable. (A stupid material to use seeing as we don't have a nice dry climate in the UK!)
My guess is that due to the dfe being pretty idle during the summer holidays, (and civil servants working from home), nothing much was done about urgent investigations over this summer period to put plans in place for a more manageable return to school next week.

Whitewavemark2

Michael Gove scrapped the £56bn school building project, inherited from the Labour government, and that was set to replace every single RAAC school in the UK.

He then replaced it with nothing.

Gove - the man’s a disaster

It was only last week that Schools Minister Nick Gibb said that pupils missing out on even a couple of days of class could have a 'detrimental effect' on exam results and social skills.

One local headteacher, whose school will be more or less closed, said that he was told in June that his school had RAAC and was advised to put mitigations in place. I'm not sure what these mitigations were supposed to be or who was going to pay for them. He was told on Thursday that most of the classrooms couldn't be used. The school was built in 1964 and was due to be rebuilt from 2010.

I wonder what kind of effect Mr Gibb thinks this will have on the pupils.

I must admit I’ve got a bad feeling about this. I’ve just read an article about affected hospitals too. It’s going to cost billions now in the short term to rectify problems that have been known about for years, and where serious safety concerns were raised in 2018 when a school had an unexpected collapse.

Not mocking a very serious situation, but isn't it KARMA, that this issue has hit the headlines, just as Westminster proposes a dilution of planning standards? This planning proposal was discussed on another thread, and some GNs thought it was fair enough to do so. Still feel that way, anyone?

An additional problem will be if the ceilings have asbestos.

Casdon

I must admit I’ve got a bad feeling about this. I’ve just read an article about affected hospitals too. It’s going to cost billions now in the short term to rectify problems that have been known about for years, and where serious safety concerns were raised in 2018 when a school had an unexpected collapse.

If it's any consolation (it's actually not, I'm being frivolous) but the economic activity involved in rectifying these problems will do wonders for the UK GDP figure...

It will mean more money circulating in the domestic economy and a boost to growth.

Not that that will be much consolation to the poor children whose education will be disrupted for the 2nd time in 5 years, nor to the teachers who are going to to have to teach in temporary and not always suitable accommodation.