Only four schools refurbished under RAAC rebuilding programme, despite Rishi Sunak’s promise of 50 a year

Only four schools have been refurbished under the government’s rebuilding programme for institutions affected by RAAC, despite Rishi Sunak’s promise that 50 would be covered a year.

The Department for Education (DfE) was forced to concede the figure on Tuesday (5 September), at a time when the Prime Minister faces increasing pressure over claims he rejected requests to fund the fixing of more ‘crumbling’ schools back when he was Chancellor. According to former minister Jonathan Slater, Chancellor Sunak only approved funding for the rebuilding of 50 schools a year, despite a bid being made for 200.

However, even this lesser target has not been reached. Since the promise was first made in 2020, only four schools have been rebuilt under the programme, the DfE said.

Sunak’s spokesperson has already rejected the claims - insisting it is “wrong” to say only four schools have been rebuilt in the last couple of years. He admitted that the four referenced by the DfE were indeed the only ones completed under the “specific” programme relating to collapse-prone reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC), but claimed “other” work had been done under “other” schemes.

The statement said: “The number of schools built over years will vary depending on the type of scheme. So obviously some of these schemes overlap. It’s wrong to give the impression that since 2020 just four schools have been completed. In actual fact, in [2020] - 2021 it’s 72, [and] in [2021] - 2022, it’s 47.”

It comes as thousands of pupils are facing disruption at the start of the new academic year, after ministers ordered 104 schools to close or partially close due to concerns about buildings being built with RAAC. This type of concrete, which was used as a common building material from the 1950s until the 1990s, is reportedly “prone to collapse”.

The government has faced questions over why the announcement was made just days before children returned to schools. The schools minister Nick Gibbs claimed last week that the issue had only fully “emerged over the summer”, but NationalWorld reported on Friday (1 September) that the DfE’s own risk assessment of the likelihood of buildings collapsing had been upgraded from ““crisis - likely” to “critical - very likely” back in September 2021.

Meanwhile, a report in June by the NAO said that the risk of injury or death from a school building collapse in England was still “very likely” - as it warned of the “critical” danger to pupils and staff.

Ministers have also faced backlash for their public handling of the scandal. Education Secretary Gillian Keegan was criticised on Monday (4 September) for an extraordinary outburst during an interview with broadcaster ITV, in which she claimed others had “sat on their a***” over the crisis and she had done a “f****** good job”.

She was also mocked on Tuesday (5 September) for tweeting a graphic which said “most schools [are] unaffected” by the RAAC crisis, with the Labour Party quick to post a spoof in response “most beachgoers not eaten by big shark“, in a reference to the stance of the mayor in the film Jaws.

Commenting on the RAAC rebuilding programme, the DfE said £1.1 billion had gone into the School Condition Allocations (SCA) this year for councils to invest in maintaining and improving the condition of their schools. Meanwhile, a further £450 million went to the Condition Improvement Fund, for urgent repairs and maintenance of stand-alone academy trusts and sixth-form colleges.

A spokesperson said: “We have committed to rebuilding 500 schools under the schools rebuilding programme between 2020 and 2030 and we are on track to deliver that commitment. Awarding contracts and establishing projects takes time but we have made rapid progress and are exceeding delivery timescales compared to the previous priority school building programme.”

Sources also told The Independent that the numbers of reparis will be ramped up over the years - pointing to other funding pots that may be made available.