Unacceptable and alarming: Deteriorating school buildings prompt urgent warnings, say MPs

- PAC report slams DfE for lack of basic information on reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC)

- Calls for package of support for teachers and students at schools in poor condition that cannot yet be fixed 

The lack of basic information from the Department for Education (DfE) on the concrete crisis in schools is both shocking and disappointing. In a report published today, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) warns that the school estate has deteriorated to the point where 700,000 pupils are learning in a school that needs major rebuilding or refurbishment, impacting their learning experiences and ultimately limiting their educational achievements.

Unacceptable numbers of pupils are learning in poorly maintained or potentially unsafe buildings. The Government’s School Rebuilding Programme (SRP), which is behind its initial schedule for getting schools built, has considered upgrades to 1,200 schools with safety issues or in poor condition. 500 schools in total will be selected to be included in the SRP, but many of the 100 schools still to be selected will be chosen due to serious RAAC issues. Many other schools will therefore not get on to the SRP, even though longer-term assessments of their poor condition would lead to a conclusion that they should be rebuilt.

The PAC is extremely concerned that DfE does not have a good enough understanding of the risks in school buildings to keep children and staff safe. Despite the PAC raising these as concerns for several years, DfE was unable to tell the PAC’s inquiry how many surveys to identify RAAC were outstanding, how many temporary classrooms had been provided to schools affected by RAAC, or say when RAAC issues would be addressed. There is a lack of certainty on support for schools affected by RAAC, and questions around both the reliability of the DfE’s information on the number and condition and schools affected, and the Government’s attitude to risk with regards to the school estate.

The PAC is also calling for the DfE to work up a full picture of asbestos across the school estate. The report finds that, as at July 2023, the DfE was unsighted on asbestos in just over 4% of schools. While this has fallen from 7% at May 2022, this still represents almost 1,000 schools. Both RAAC and asbestos can be present in the same building, complicating any works to tackle the issues. Since 2011, around 11 teachers or ex-teachers have died from asbestos-related conditions each year, Health and Safety Executive data suggests. The report urges the Government to develop a package of support and good practice, targeted at helping mitigate the negative impact on pupils and teachers of schools that are in poor condition but cannot yet be fixed.

Dame Meg Hillier MP, Chair of the Committee, said: “A significant proportion of children in this country are learning in dilapidated or unsafe buildings. This is clearly beyond unacceptable, but overcoming the consequences of this deficit of long-term infrastructure planning will not be easy. The School Rebuilding Programme was already struggling to stay on track, and DfE lacked a mechanism to direct funding to regions which need it most. It risks being blown further off course by concerns over RAAC, and many schools in dire need of help will not receive it as a result.

“The images of classroom ceilings collapsed onto empty school desks released in recent months are not just searing indictments of a deteriorating school estate. They are chilling reminders of absolute catastrophe averted through sheer luck. Given the poor condition of so many of these buildings, the Government’s prime challenge now is to keep the safety of children and staff absolutely paramount.”

PAC report conclusions and recommendations 

DfE still has incomplete knowledge on the number and condition of schools with RAAC, with questions about the reliability of some of its information. In mid-September 2023, DfE reported that 98% of schools had responded to a RAAC questionnaire that it issued in March 2022, meaning that several hundred responses were outstanding. However, this set of responses included some which were inconclusive, while other schools are resubmitting their responses given renewed media focus on RAAC. DfE’s guidance about the questionnaire explained that an estates manager or appropriately qualified building surveyor should make the relevant judgements. But DfE is concerned about the potential for schools to have submitted ‘false negative’ responses, and it plans to conduct sample checks where schools suggest they do not have RAAC. Where a school responds to say it believes RAAC is present, it will take a number of weeks to conduct the specialist survey to confirm this. With RAAC now more widely recognised as a problem, there is a greater risk that experts who can help identify and manage RAAC will may be in short supply. NHS England, for example, has told us that there is a limited number of specialist engineers.      

Recommendation 1a: DfE needs to urgently assess the risks of inaccuracies within RAAC questionnaire returns and specialist surveys, so that it considers these risks in its overall approach, decision-making and guidance. 

1. b) DfE should expedite its programme of specialist surveys where RAAC is suspected, and in due course publish the full set of results so that the extent of the RAAC problem is known.

DfE’s risk appetite regarding the school estate, and how this aligns with its recent approach on RAAC, appears unclear. Since summer 2021, DfE has recognised a significant safety risk across the school estate. In spring 2023, it continued to assess that its mitigations would not bring the risk likelihood down to acceptable levels, and considered that the most effective further mitigation would be an expanded School Rebuilding Programme. In late August 2023, DfE took what it considers to be a highly risk-averse approach of advising all schools with confirmed RAAC to avoid using spaces where RAAC was present, regardless of any assessment of its structural condition. It is unclear whether DfE took this action because it realised its RAAC assessment and assurance process was insufficient, or because it now no longer wanted to accept any risks across the school estate. Where schools have responded to the questionnaire saying they believe they have RAAC, but are still awaiting a specialist survey to confirm it, they are not being advised to take any mitigating action. DHSC has established a £685 million fund to 2024-25 to mitigate RAAC, and has committed to remove RAAC from the NHS estate by 2035. DfE has made no such financial or practical commitments. 

Recommendation 2a: DfE should clarify its risk appetite with regard to safety issues across the school estate and ensure that this feeds through into consistent decision-making, with a nominated senior official in charge. 

1. b) In line with the approach already taken by DHSC, DfE should make clear when and how it plans to have eradicated RAAC from the school estate.

Schools are uncertain about the support they can access to mitigate RAAC-related issues, and how they will be reimbursed financially. The temporary classrooms that DfE is providing will generally be for those schools that were known to be affected by RAAC before the late August 2023 change of risk approach. DfE could not provide us with a figure on how many were being provided. DfE has undertaken to pay for the capital costs incurred by schools, but its approach to revenue funding, and paying for surveys carried out by schools, is less clear, particularly if a school has significant reserves. DfE is still to set the funding application process, but has accepted the need for some checking and controls to be in place. While each school has access to a caseworker, anecdotal evidence suggests that many are struggling to understand DfE’s approach, and are concerned about a lack of fairness in terms of access to temporary support and how that support will be paid for.

Recommendation 3: DfE needs to re-examine its process for funding temporary mitigation measures, ensuring it achieves the right balance between accessibility and value for money, communicating this clearly and consistently to schools.

There remains a lack of transparency for schools, parents and communities on where RAAC exists and how long it will take to be fixed. DfE was unable to provide answers to important questions such as how many specialist surveys to confirm RAAC are outstanding and likely to be carried out, or how many pupils were affected by RAAC-related school closures at the start of the 2023-24 school year. DfE says it is looking to release information in a managed and routine way as it does for other management information. After our evidence session DfE reported on 19 October that RAAC had at that point been confirmed in 214 educational settings, of which 202 were providing face-to-face education for all pupils. Despite suggestions in early September that the RAAC situation would be resolved in a matter of weeks, DfE is aware that some cases are too complicated to be dealt with in this timeframe, and that some schools will not even be identified as having RAAC until later.

Recommendation 4: DfE must write to the Committee, alongside its Treasury Minute response, with its latest assessment of the scale of the RAAC problem, its overall plan to deal with it, and the likely associated costs.

DfE has incomplete knowledge of the prevalence of asbestos across the school estate.  In May 2022, DfE agreed with our recommendation that it should urgently chase the 7% of schools that had not responded to the asbestos management survey it launched in 2018. In July 2023, DfE explained that the proportion of schools on which it was unsighted had since fallen to just over 4%, although this still represents almost 1,000 schools. Work on DfE’s ongoing second Condition Data Collection programme (CDC2) will not specifically check for asbestos, but it will include a review of schools’ asbestos management plans and compliance with guidance requiring schools to have an onsite asbestos register. The unexpected presence of asbestos has complicated ongoing work to address other issues such as RAAC. The two can both be present in the same building. Data from the Health and Safety Executive suggest, that since 2011, around 11 teachers or ex-teachers have died from asbestos-related conditions each year. 

Recommendation 5: As soon as possible, DfE should provide us with evidence that it has a full picture of asbestos across the school estate, having received survey returns from all schools and ensuring that every relevant school has an adequate asbestos management plan in place.

Unacceptable numbers of pupils are learning in poorly maintained or potentially unsafe buildings.  The quality of school buildings has an impact on pupils’ learning experience, and ultimately on attainment levels and teacher retention. An estimated 700,000 pupils attend the 1,200 schools that have been considered for the School Rebuilding Programme, which aims to rebuild or refurbish those buildings in the most need given safety matters or their poor general condition (which could include problems with, for example, roofs, windows or heating systems). DfE will select 500 schools to be included in the programme. DfE’s first Condition Data Collection programme (CDC1), conducted between 2017 and 2019, found that just over 2% of building components were in ‘poor’ or ‘bad’ condition, but this covers a large number of schools.

Recommendation 6: Within the next year, DfE should develop a package of support and good practice to help those responsible for mitigating the negative impact on pupils and teachers of schools that are in poor condition but cannot yet be fixed.

DfE has focused on reactive measures addressing immediate building concerns that often fail to take account of longer-term value for money considerations. DfE has committed to providing funding for all schools that face critical and immediate safety risks but are unable to carry out appropriate remedial work themselves. DfE has been allocated school rebuilding funding equating to £1.3 billion a year – allowing it to rebuild 50 schools a year, rather than the 200 a year that it set out it in its Spending Review 2020 case. A significant number of the schools chosen for DfE’s latest capital programme – the School Rebuilding Programme – have been selected in response to structural or safety issues that responsible bodies have identified as serious enough to mean buildings are at risk of closure or pose a risk to staff and pupils. DfE told us that many of the 100 schools still to be selected for the programme will be chosen because they have serious issues with RAAC. As such, many other schools will not get on to the School Rebuilding Programme even though a longer-term value for money assessment based on their poor condition would lead to the conclusion that they should be rebuilt. With regard to fire safety measures, DfE’s cost-benefit calculations often lead it to opt for expensive retrofitting rather than initial inclusion in a new school design which is cheaper.     

Recommendation 7: Within the next year, DfE should set out its strategy for encouraging responsible bodies to carry out timely and effective repairs to better protect longer-term value for money. It should also reconsider its value for money analysis on fitting fire safety measures. 

The School Rebuilding Programme is behind its initial schedule for getting contracts in place and schools built.  DfE announced the School Rebuilding Programme in June 2020. By March 2023, it had delivered one project compared with a forecast four, and awarded 24 contracts compared with a forecast 83. Price inflation and other market conditions have made it difficult to find contractors. DfE has reacted by offering risk-sharing arrangements that are more attractive to the building sector and by standardising the design of buildings. DfE concedes that it will not be able to catch up on projects where it is already behind the planned timeframe, but it is confident it will stay on track for upcoming projects. We have seen how changes in the external environment, such as movements in inflation rates, may affect programmes and create complexities. These factors may mean a programme can no longer achieve its intended outcomes, or it is too costly to do so.

Recommendation 8: DfE should provide us with assurance that it has a good understanding of how current and likely future challenges will affect the timetable and costs for the School Rebuilding Programme, including by carrying out appropriate scenario-planning should likely and significant risks materialise.

There is considerable variation across the school estate, including regional disparity in the condition of school buildings and differences in school types and governance models, which will influence the type of support DfE needs to provide. The map of school building condition shows a broad north-south divide, with higher need in the north. However, a more granular assessment also suggests that schools in rural and coastal areas face particular difficulties. DfE does not currently have a mechanism for directing capital funding towards those areas identified as meriting particular support to tackle weak educational outcomes. For around one-third of the 1,000 schools with the highest level of need, the responsible body did not make an application for the School Rebuilding Programme. DfE has also found that a proportion of schools in most need do not apply for, or are unaware of, the maintenance and repair funding that is available to them. Voluntary-aided schools (which are typically faith-based) often have good relationships with their respective oversight bodies, but administrative and funding arrangements are inconsistent. Some small local authorities, which are responsible for only a few maintained schools, may lack estate management capability but are currently excluded from DfE’s Capital Advisers Programme.

Recommendation 9: DfE should review its guidance, support and financial allocations designed to help reduce variation in the condition of school buildings and the capability of those managing the estate, and make improvements where necessary.   

It is unclear whether decisions concerned with addressing the condition of the estate are coordinated with those relating to the need for school places. Historically, there have been instances of school closures just before another demographic wave of children that means more school places have to be created. More recently, in some areas – for example, London – we have seen diminishing school rolls which raises the question of potential closures. Both situations may complicate decisions about which schools to maintain or refurbish. There is no requirement for responsible bodies to work together to, for example, consider possible closures or amalgamations of schools on borough boundaries to ensure the most efficient option is chosen. Given the recognised autonomy of responsible bodies, DfE’s regional directors do not typically play a strong role in school closure decisions, but they engage with schools and other bodies to discuss such issues. From a departmental perspective, when considering School Rebuilding Programme applications, DfE checks the forecast pupil numbers to ensure that the school merits a full rebuild. Ideally, DfE would like more school places than there are children, to support parental choice in the system. In some places, sites no longer needed for primary schools might be re-purposed to provide more childcare and early years provision, or opportunities for more special and alternative provision.

Recommendation 10: DfE should consider how local authorities can best be supported, and put in place the necessary measures, to ensure that the need for high quality places across the estate is considered when decisions are taken on reducing school places locally