RAAC: If the Tories care about school attendance how did the crisis happen? | UK News

As September grew closer, the government made it clear that tackling school absence was a top priority. 

Children’s Minister Nick Gibb told us to send our kids to school even when they have a cough or cold because just one day off school could set them back. 

Children’s Commissioner, Rachel de Souza, even set a target of 100% attendance. 

So the message is clear, right? Children must attend school. 

Unless, that is, their school is one of a hundred or more deemed hazardous due to inadequate, lightweight concrete – known as RAAC.

Then, with a mere couple of days (and in some cases hours) before term starts, they may have to pivot back to online learning, be relocated to temporary accommodation or other local schools. 

The chaos of pandemic lockdowns and school closures is still fresh in the nation’s mind: a massive, short-notice disruption like this is plunging families, schools and communities up and down the country into total disarray as people figure out what to do with thousands of children who have no school building to go to. 

And given that the government was repeatedly warned about the potentially deadly infrastructure of countless schools (and other public buildings like hospitals) – and was aware the roof of a primary school collapsed in 2018 – it seems nothing short of incompetence that kids up and down the country now have no school to start the academic year in.

Like most major national controversies, the total ineptitude of those in power cannot be ignored. 

While this current Conservative Government didn’t put the RAAC there in the first place (and in fact it was hailed a wonder material in its 1950s and 1960s heyday), its legacy of austerity and cuts is surely to blame for never investing in more sustainable, safe long-term solutions for such important public buildings – materials that wouldn’t form a life risk to students in decades time.

Either way, it is our current government who decided to issue the statement within touching distance of the start of term. 

Why not, for example, at the start of summer? In order to give families time to arrange childcare, schools enough notice to construct mobiles or other temporary accommodation, and communities plenty of opportunity to juggle around the groups that would need rehousing.

It feels nothing short of a massive cosmic metaphor that the buildings that house our most vital public institutions are quite literally on the brink of collapse. 

There couldn’t be a more apt or sobering depiction of the decimation caused by successive cuts, freezing and underfunding. The dark, immovable stain of austerity.

As a teacher, I know that our schools have long been crumbling to pieces – at least in a figurative sense. 

I’ve seen colleagues leaving in droves for jobs with salaries they can actually survive on. A mass exodus of TAs realising they’d be better paid at the local supermarket. 

Poverty crippling the lives of our students – bringing them to our doors hungry, cold, overtired and underdeveloped. 

Underpaid teachers buying food for kids out of their own pockets while their own bills remain unpaid.

I know that cuts to funding mean school trips are far flung dreams, extracurricular clubs are long gone and one teacher is covering three different subjects because the school can’t afford to employ an expert. 

That there us an unsolved mental health crisis plunging children, teachers and leaders alike into anxiety and depression with months ahead of them on a NHS waiting list for help.

Schools have already been in a constant state of upheaval for the last few years. From the government battling with unions over fair pay, teacher strikes, the legacy of the pandemic on academic outcomes – and of course the commotion of flitting between online and in-person learning during the pandemic. 

This latest scandal is evidence of yet further neglect to one of our nation’s most critical and irreplaceable sectors – and as usual it will impact the already disadvantaged the most.

It is the poorest children who will struggle to just whip out a laptop and join online lessons next week. I know from teaching during lockdown that many children rely on using the free WiFi in McDonalds on their phone to access their work, or share an old device with multiple siblings who also have virtual sessions to attend. 

It is the parents without the flexible jobs – those working low-paid, unstable zero-hours contracts or in retail, healthcare or manufacturing – who won’t be able to simply work from home to watch their dislodged children. It’s the families struggling to keep a roof over their heads who will struggle to absorb the cost of the extra childcare implications of children with no school to go to.

It is the kids in poverty who won’t have the extra bus fare or a parent’s car to get them to an alternative location to learn in for the coming weeks and months. 

And as ever, it’s the most deprived state schools in the most disadvantaged areas who will struggle to fund a solution to this. The ones who use up their budget on providing free breakfasts because otherwise their students come to school hungry.

The schools that subsidise trips so their pupils can experience a theatre or seaside for once in their lives (something they won’t get at home). The ones who don’t have an overflowing donation pot from alumni to smooth over this upheaval.

Even despite the government’s promises that they will fund any building work required – including the installation of temporary measures like mobiles – things are never equal in this nation built upon inequality. 

The RAAC scandal is yet another stain on this nation’s history – further evidence of the government’s utter disregard for our most prized and irreplaceable institutions.

It’s as though schools and hospitals are so utterly decimated by the legacy of austerity that even the buildings have given up.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk. 

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