RAAC concrete crisis deepens as 17 more schools and colleges found to have dodgy material | The Sun

THE number of schools and colleges in England where collapse-risk concrete has been found has risen, the Department for Education (DfE) has confirmed.

Another 17 schools and colleges in England have been identified as having reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) on site, bringing the total to 231 as of November 27.


The list suggests three secondary schools are providing a mix of face-to-face lessons and remote learning because RAAC was present in their buildings.

Bramhall High School in Stockport, Cheshire, St Thomas a Becket Catholic Secondary School in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, and St Clere's School in Stanford-le-Hope, Essex, are all offering some remote learning.

The previous update from the DfE showed there were 214 settings with RAAC – and 12 were offering "hybrid" education of face-to-face and remote learning – as of October 16.

Last year, the DfE issued a questionnaire to responsible bodies for all schools in England to ask them to identify whether they suspected they had RAAC.

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Education Secretary Gillian Keegan told MPs on the education select committee that all responsible bodies of settings with buildings built in the target era have now submitted responses.

She said: "So we have 100 per cent of the questionnaires from the settings in the target era – that was the years that could have contained RAAC. All the first surveys are complete."

Ms Keegan told MPs on Wednesday that "231 currently have confirmed RAAC".

"Now we do expect there will be some more because as we go back for follow-up survey work we will identify a few more," she said.

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The Education Secretary added: "There will only be probably a handful more cases because it's definitely massively slowed down."

The DfE's top official, permanent secretary Susan Acland-Hood, told MPs on the committee that "41 settings now have temporary buildings on site".

She said: "There will still be settings that we've identified later in the process that need temporary buildings that won't have them yet.

"There will also be settings that didn't need temporary buildings in order to get all pupils back into face-to-face education but might still benefit from some specialist units in order to make sure they can deliver the full curriculum."

Ms Acland-Hood added: "We've got about 110 schools for where we think mitigation is the right approach rather than temporary buildings.

"And we've also got schools where it may be better for them to share facilities with a nearby school for things like science labs because the lead time on specialist temporary units is long because it tends to be built bespoke by the Portakabin company."

Scores of schools and colleges in England were told by the Government to fully or partly close their buildings just days before the start of the autumn term amid concerns about collapse-prone RAAC.


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