The government was accused of behaving like a “cowboy builder” over its handling of the faulty concrete crisis in schools as the prime minister Rishi Sunak and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer clashed in the Commons.
The Labour leader blamed the government for the start-of-term disruption after it was confirmed that more than 40 schools have had to either delay pupils’ return or move some to remote learning because their buildings contain collapse-prone reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC).
Sir Keir used Prime Minister’s Questions to highlight schools that missed out on being rebuilt in 2010 when the Conservative-led coalition government axed the Building Schools for the Future programme, and which have now been identified as having RAAC.
He also called on Mr Sunak to commit to publishing the Department for Education’s funding requests to the Treasury for the school rebuilding programme along with information about any risks he was warned of as chancellor “before he turned them down”. The department’s former permanent secretary Jonathan Slater said earlier in the week that the programme had been cut in half on Mr Sunak’s watch.
Sir Keir said: “The truth is this crisis is the inevitable result of 13 years of cutting corners, botched jobs, sticking-plaster politics. It’s the sort of thing you expect from cowboy builders saying that everyone else is wrong, everyone else is to blame, protesting that they’ve done an effin’ good job even as the ceiling falls in.
“The difference is that, in this case, the cowboys are running the country.”
Mr Sunak told the Commons he would “make no apology for acting decisively in the face of new information” in relation to schools, adding that the government is doing “everything it can to fix this quickly and minimise the disruption to children’s education”.
‘Heads insulted by insinuations of laziness’
It comes as the two school leaders’ unions, NAHT and the Association of School and College Leaders, have written jointly to Gillian Keegan to voice “their members’ dismay” at her comment that some schools needed to “get off their backsides” in the RAAC concrete crisis.
The unions were responding to comments made by the education secretary yesterday about the claim that about five per cent of responsible bodies for schools had not responded to a DfE RAAC survey sent out in March 2022.
Appearing on Jeremy Vine’s Radio 2 show she said it was “annoying” that some schools had not yet responded to the survey, adding: “Hopefully, all this publicity will make them get off their backsides.”
The joint union letter to her says: “We have been overwhelmed with complaints about the remarks you made on the Jeremy Vine show yesterday. School leaders have once again been thrown into unnecessary crisis management by the failures of government. To now be insulted by the secretary of state with an insinuation that they are lazy and need to be told to get off their backsides is unacceptable.
“Your phrase, ‘here’s five per cent of schools or responsible bodies that have not responded to the survey, now hopefully all this publicity will make them get off their backsides’, lacks precision and professionalism. It also paints a false picture while hiding the continuing failings of your department.”
On Monday Ms Keegan apologised after she was recorded swearing and suggesting she deserved praise for her handling of the RAAC crisis in schools.
She was caught on camera by ITV after an interview, saying: “Does anyone ever say, ‘you know what, you’ve done a fucking good job’, because everyone else has sat on their arse and done nothing?”
The Commons Education Committee has announced that it has asked a DfE minister and its most senior civil servant to answer questions over RAAC in school buildings .
A one-off evidence session will be held on Tuesday 19 September, with DfE permanent secretary Susan Acland-Hood and Baroness Barran, the minister with responsibility for school capital investment.
The prime minister offered assurances today that new funding will be provided for schools with concrete at risk of collapse.
Responding to Conservative former cabinet minister Priti Patel, he said: “I am to give her the reassurance, as the chancellor already said, new funding will be provided to schools to deal with this issue.”
