The concrete crisis that has forced the closure of 156 British schools at the start of the course -and which may also affect dozens of hospitals- has hit the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, squarely, accused of not financing the renovation of public buildings in his previous stint as Secretary of the Treasury.
The collapse that occurred in the middle of summer in a school, built with lightweight “autoclaved cellular reinforced” concrete (RAAC), prompted the urgent revision of dozens of public schools, built during the 1970s, due to the risk of collapse.
“It is frustrating that this has happened precisely at this time,” Sunak acknowledged, referring to the return to schools. “But I want to give people a real sense of the scale of the problem: we have 22,000 public schools in England, and 95% of them will not be affected.”
In the light of Sunak’s statements, it follows that the problem could eventually affect more than a thousand schools, without taking into account the ongoing review of hospitals and public buildings where security panels have been used. RAAC.
“This is a metaphor for the abandonment with which the ‘Tories’ have punished public education in the last 13 years,” warned Labor MP Bridget Phillipson. “I was at school when we had another Conservative government (John Major). I know what happens when schools are falling apart, with buckets of water to collect the leaks, due to lack of investment for their maintenance.”
Sunak insisted that the problem of RAAC panels in schools has been detected very recently and that it is “completely wrong” to blame him for the “concrete crisis” that threatens to leave thousands of students without school (forced to take distance classes as during the Covid).
Jonathan Slater, former permanent secretary of the Department of Education, however reactivated the controversy on Monday, assuring that Sunak three years ago rejected the public funds necessary to “rebuild 300 to 400 schools” a year in England, when he was Treasury secretary with Boris Johnson. According to Sltater, the financing finally arrived for only fifty centers, “despite the evidence of the critical risk to life due to the collapse of the panels.”
Education secretary Gilliam Keegan helped fuel the controversy in her own way when she blew up on ITV cameras, saying “everyone just sat on their asses doing nothing” about the issue. It is not known if Keegan was referring to her superiors or her predecessors in office.
