Pencils are sharpened, shirts are ironed – but classrooms are at risk of sudden collapse. This is the reality of the start of the 2023-24 academic year for more than 100 schools, further education colleges and nurseries in England where potentially unsafe reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) has been discovered.
After more than a year of extremely disruptive remote learning during the pandemic, yet more upheaval looms next week. A picture of the potential chaos is clear from Department for Education (DfE) guidance documents hurriedly published on Thursday just days before the back-to-school rush.
The DfE says it is acting in “an abundance of caution and to prioritise safety of children, pupils, and staff”, and points out that the large majority of schools are unaffected.
But for those that are, headteachers are being advised to look for space in vacant office buildings, to approach local community centres to turn them into temporary classrooms, and to look into “semi-rigid temporary structures that can quickly be brought to your school college or maintained nursery school”.
There is not much notice to make such arrangements – in effect, only one working day for schools due to welcome back pupils on Monday.
But these spaces need to be secured while safety works lasting weeks are carried out. If classrooms have to be filled with temporary props to stop the roof from falling in, one option is to try to get children back learning among the supports.
If it is impossible to teach in such classrooms, longer-term temporary accommodation should then be erected on site. Many schools have cramped campuses already, so finding space may be impossible. The DfE guidance offers no solution other than telling teachers: “You will need to discuss this with your caseworker.”
Other pupils could be bussed or sent on public transport to nearby schools – providing those buildings aren’t at risk of collapse as well.
Setting aside the disruption to pupils, who have been gearing themselves up to start a new year or even a new school in a certain place and alongside certain classmates, if this is going to happen by next week school leaders face a tough logistical and safeguarding challenge.
School leaders have to do “whatever they reasonably can to provide the receiving institution with any relevant welfare and child protection information”, the DfE states. For vulnerable children, education health and care plans will have to be shared with schools looking after them temporarily. Social workers will have to be alerted to the new arrangements.
This should ideally happen before a child or young person arrives, the guidance states. For children with special educational needs, their information needs to be exchanged too. The idea that important matters will not fall between the cracks seems optimistic.
If this wasn’t enough to arrange before next week, school leaders have been told they should also be ready to send lunch parcels or vouchers to any children who qualify for free school meals learning at home.
And then there is the return to lessons over Zoom or Microsoft Teams – a practice that resulted in such poor outcomes for children in some cases that many educationalists pledged “never again”.
This should only be “a last resort” and only when other options are exhausted, the guidance says. But given the lack of notice it seems likely for some at least. Recorded teaching will be acceptable.
There is no mention of what arrangements working parents should make if home schooling is necessary.
There is no extra money available for any of this. The government has been aware of RAAC in public-sector buildings since 1994 and in 2018 the DfE warned schools about the need for plans to be in place if RAAC-affected buildings needed to be vacated at short notice.
“We expect you to be able to fund anything that is an additional revenue cost, for example rental costs for emergency or temporary accommodation … or additional transport costs,” the guidance says.
School leaders are furious. Daniel Kebede, the general secretary of the National Education Union, said this added “insult to injury”.
He said the government “is expecting schools to pay the additional costs of its own shocking neglect of school buildings. This is not made clear in the government announcement, meaning that school leaders are likely to be misled about the full costs to their budget.”
Dame Rachel de Souza, the children’s commissioner for England, is worried. “After years of disruption for children and young people, what they need most is stability and getting back to normal,” she said.
“We must learn lessons from the pandemic, and we need to see proper communication to children and families affected by this guidance. There also needs to be clear direction as to where children should go at the start of the new term and reassure them that places are safe and suitable.
“Everything must now be done to ensure the impact on children’s learning is minimised. And it is particularly important that everyone working with children prioritises those who are vulnerable and those with additional needs.”
