Around 700,000 pupils in England attend schools requiring major repairs after years of underfunding, with poor conditions directly affecting pupil attainment and teacher retention, a new report warns.
The National Audit Office (NAO) report also says that the Department for Education does not have sufficient information to manage “critical” risks to the safety of pupils and staff arising from a deterioration in the condition of school buildings.
NAO head Gareth Davies said that, despite assessing the possibility of building collapse or building failure causing death or injury as “critical and very likely” in 2021, “the Department for Education has not been able to reduce this risk”.
Around 24,000 school buildings, or 38 per cent of the total, are beyond their estimated design lifespan, the report warns.
The DfE has said a large proportion of the 700,000 children are “already set to benefit from new and refurbished school buildings as part of the School Rebuilding Programme”.
A major cause of concern raised in the report is reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC), which is prone to failure and was regularly used for building between the 1950s and mid-1990s.
The danger of deteriorating school buildings
The DfE has been considering the potential risk posed by RAAC since 2018, following a roof collapse at a school in Kent, but the level of risk in many schools remains unknown.
So far the DfE has identified 24 schools that require immediate action, the public spending watchdog says.
Headteachers’ leaders described the report’s findings as “shocking” and called on ministers to show greater urgency in identifying and tackling the risks.
A separate NAO report published today warns that that the DfE has no plan for how it will decarbonise the school estate and does not know how much this will cost.
The NAO said the DfE has expanded its data collection on the state of school buildings, distributed warnings to bodies responsible for school safety and issued guidance on identifying RAAC.
It said the focus is now on 14,900 schools built during the period when RAAC was used in construction. Of these, 42 per cent have confirmed they have undertaken work to identify RAAC, but potential risks are yet to be identified in the remaining schools.
By May this year, 572 schools had been confirmed as potentially containing RAAC. The DfE is working with them to confirm that steps have been taken to mitigate the risks to staff and pupils, the report says.
The latest figures show that 196 out of 600 assessments planned by December had identified RAAC in 65 schools, of which 24 required immediate action. Extra funding has been provided to ensure there is no immediate risk in these schools.
The DfE said it needed £5.3 billion a year of capital funding to maintain school buildings and mitigate the most serious risks of building failure, in its 2020 spending review submission. It requested an average of £4 billion a year between 2021 and 2025.
However, the Treasury allocated an average of £3.1 billion, leading to local authorities and multi-academy trusts using their own limited funding on the most urgent problems.
Reacting to the school-building condition report, Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT school leaders’ union, said: ”These shocking figures lay bare how far short the government is falling in its efforts to ensure school buildings are safe and fit for purpose for children and staff.
“Safety should be a given, but the Department for Education is failing to meet even its own inadequate targets for investment to mitigate the most serious risks, let alone ensure schools are in a reasonable state of repair, with sustainable carbon-zero buildings.”
Julie McCulloch, director of policy at the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “This report paints a shocking picture of the government’s neglect of school buildings. It is appalling that so many children are in facilities that are in such poor condition that this can negatively impact on their attainment and on teacher retention. It is even more worrying that the risk of building collapse causing death or injury is assessed by the Department for Education itself as being ‘critical and very likely’.”
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “Nothing is more important than the safety of pupils and teachers, which is why we have been significantly investing in transforming schools up and down the country .
“We are investing in 500 projects for new and refurbished school buildings through our School Rebuilding Programme. On top of this we have allocated over £15 billion since 2015 for keeping schools safe and operational, including £1.8 billion committed for 2023-24.
“It is the responsibility of those who run our schools - academy trusts, local authorities and voluntary-aided school bodies, who speak to their schools day to day - to manage the maintenance of their schools and to alert us if there is a concern with a building. We will always provide support on a case-by-case basis if we are alerted to a serious safety issue by these responsible bodies.”
