RAAC concrete crisis: Rishi Sunak blamed for school rebuilding cuts by official - education funding explained

Rishi Sunak refused to fully fund a programme to rebuild at risk schools while Chancellor, a former senior Department for Education official has said.

Jonathan Slater, who was permanent secretary at the DfE from May 2016 to August 2020, said that while up to 400 schools a year need to be replaced, but the department only got funding for 100, which was "frustrating".

In an interview with the BBC, he claimed that in 2021 Rishi Sunak actually halved the funding - so only 50 schools a year would be rebuilt. This was during the midst of the Covid pandemic.

The revelation comes as thousands of pupils are facing disruption at the start of term this week, after an order to fully or partially close 104 schools because of concerns about collapse-prone reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC). This type of concrete, which was used as a common building material from the 50s until the early 90s, is reportedly “prone to collapse”.

Questions have been asked of the government as to why the announcement was made just days before the start of term. NationalWorld previously revealed that the Department for Education raised the risk level around buildings collapsing to "critical - very likely" in September 2021.

Speaking to the BBC this morning, Slater said he was “absolutely amazed” that a decision was made after he left the department to halve the school rebuilding programme.

He told Radio 4’s Today programme: “The actual ask in the Spending Review of 2021 was to double the 100 to 200 – that’s what we thought was going to be practical at first instance. I thought we’d get it, but the actual decision that the chancellor took in 2021 was to halve the size of the programme.”

Rishi Sunak said "this is completely and utterly wrong", before confirming he gave funding to 50 schools a year. He told broadcasters: "Actually one of the first things I did as Chancellor, in my first spending review in 2020, was to announce a new 10-year school re-building programme for 500 schools.

"Now that equates to about 50 schools a year, that will be refurbished or rebuilt. If you look at what we have been doing over the previous decade, that’s completely in line with what we have always done.”

Labour analysis of National Audit Office figures found that spending on school rebuilding dropped by 41% while Sunak was Chancellor. It said the school rebuilding budget in 2019-20 was £765 million, but after Sunak became Chancellor this dropped to £560 million in 2020-21 and as little as £416 million in 2021-22.

Bridget Phillipson, Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary, said: “The defining image of thirteen years of the Conservative-run education system will be children sat under steel girders to stop the roof falling in.

“Rishi Sunak bears huge culpability for his role in this debacle: he doubled down on Michael Gove’s decision to axe Labour’s schools rebuilding programme and now the chickens have come home to roost – with yet more disruption to children’s education.

The issue of England’s ageing schools – highlighted by a NAO report which said up to 700,000 children are being taught in buildings that need replacing or major refurbishment – has become a political storm.

Just days before the start of term more than 100 schools in England were told to fully or partially close as a result of safety concerns about RAAC. The Department for Education has so far refused to say which schools are affected.

Education Secretary Gillian Keegan has vowed to publish a list of the schools affected by the concrete crisis this week.

She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We will publish the list, but I do want to double-check that the school has had the opportunity – because not all the schools are back yet – to tell all parents.”

She said three companies providing portable buildings have already been contracted to set up temporary classrooms.

“Many schools are either looking for alternative accommodation, if they’re within a multi-academy trust or within a local authority, or moving to another classroom if they’ve got spare classrooms,” she told Sky News.

“If it’s across the whole school, then that gets more difficult. So what we’re doing right now is we’ve assigned a caseworker for each one of the schools, working with the school to figure out what the mitigation plans are.”

She defended the Tories’ record on school funding, in response to Slater’s comments.

“I’ve just announced 239 school rebuilding projects,” she said, but could not indicate how many a year, saying only that they would be done “as soon as possible”.

She added: “We’ve delivered much better value for money, much more schools have been rebuilt, much more schools are going to be rebuilt, we’ve got a grip of RAAC.”

While the Prime Minister defended the timing of the announcement, saying: “New information came to light relatively recently and it’s important that once it had, that the Government acted on it as swiftly as possible.

“Of course I know the timing is frustrating, but I want to give people a sense of the scale of what we are grappling with here: there are around 22,000 schools in England and the important thing to know is that we expect that 95% of those schools won’t be impacted by this.” If 5% of schools in England are impacted, that would mean 1,100 are affected.

Liberal Democrat education spokeswoman Munira Wilson said: “This bombshell revelation shows the blame for this concrete crisis lies firmly at Rishi Sunak’s door.

“He slashed funding to repair crumbling classrooms when officials said it needed to be increased. Now children and parents across the country are paying the price for this disastrously short-sighted decision.”

Unions and industry groups said they have been warning the government since 2018 over concerns around the safety of school buildings.

Cllr Kevin Bentley, senior vice-chairman of the Local Government Association, said: “Leaving this announcement until near the end of the summer holidays, rather than at the beginning, has left schools and councils with very little time to make urgent rearrangements and minimise disruption to classroom learning.

“The LGA has been warning of the risk from RAAC in schools since 2018. The government should urgently establish a taskforce, including with the LGA and councils to ensure the safety of both pupils and staff in the long term.”

Thirteen national education associations wrote to every Conservative MP in October last year warning about funding, saying they were concerned about the 2,000 schools which contained RAAC. At the time, they warned that these roofs are prone to collapse.

And in February, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) along with seven unions wrote to the DfE urging it to disclose which school buildings are most at risk and have an urgent intervention

Schools in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are also being assessed for RAAC. The Scottish Government has said it is present in 35 schools, but that none poses an “immediate risk” to pupil safety.

The Welsh Government said councils and colleges have not reported any presence of RAAC.