In 2021 the Department for Education calculated that more than 300 schools needed to be repaired every year to deal with the possible catastrophic collapse of the postwar concrete with which they had been built. Jonathan Slater, who was the department’s top civil servant from May 2016 to August 2020, told the BBC that civil servants thought that the Treasury would only pay for 200 annually. But they did not count on the penny-pinching of Rishi Sunak. He would end up funding only 50 rebuilds a year. At the weekend the austerity chickens came home to roost. More than 100 schools have been shut fully or partly due to risky reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac). Hundreds more potentially face the same fate.
Mr Sunak says he’s not to blame. His explanation that his plans were in line with school capital spending over the past decade misses the point. If as chancellor you dismiss a warning that later turns out to be true, then the fault is yours. The education secretary, Gillian Keegan, then had to apologise for claiming pungently that her “work” went unacknowledged. Labour gleefully alighted on the chaos. But, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies points out, capital spending on schools is half its 2010 peak. Sir Keir Starmer is right to attack the Tories for incompetence. However, he has not pledged the extra billions of pounds needed to fix the problem.
