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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
World
Josh Salisbury

West London secondary confirmed as having Raac as school building crisis deepens

A west London secondary school and north London college have been found to have collapse-risk concrete.

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

Among them are Barnet and Southgate College, which has campuses across Barnet and Enfield, and Featherstone High School in Southall.

The list suggests there are three secondary schools providing a mix of face-to-face lessons and remote learning because Raac is 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 currently offering some remote learning.

Abingdon and Witney College in Oxfordshire was identified by the DfE as a new case where it said mitigations are still under discussion.

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.

Education Secretary Gillian Keegan told MPs on the Education Select Committee that all responsible bodies of settings with buildings constructed in the target era have now submitted responses.

Ms Keegan told MPs on Wednesday: "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.

"There will only be probably a handful more cases because it's definitely massively slowed down."

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.

Paul Whiteman, general secretary at school leaders' union NAHT, said: "It is pretty embarrassing for the Government that we are now almost at the end of the autumn term and it is still adding schools to this list - and the Secretary of State has today told the Education Committee that this figure will continue to rise.

"We were promised urgency and immediate repairs, and yet there are still schools waiting for mitigations to be put in place.

"This long overdue update shows the continuing disruption facing many pupils, parents and schools.

"It underlines the Government's failure to set out a timetable for how long this will continue, let alone the long-term plan and fresh investment desperately needed to ensure the school estate is safe and fit for purpose."

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