'Concrete chaos is just the latest Tory failure that proves they hate our kids'
Of all the things to be grateful for, this was never one I would have even considered before last week.
My son went back to school on Monday, and I’m reasonably confident the building will not collapse on top of him. For this I am truly thankful, because, somehow, it makes me lucky.
Mum Michelle Forbes, whose 15-year-old son Taylor is at Ferryhill School in County Durham, is one of the many who weren’t.
She says Taylor has special educational needs, and is already around two years behind his classmates after struggling with online learning during the pandemic.
And now, days before he was due to go back after the summer holidays, to begin the already daunting task of preparing for GCSEs that will determine his future, another devastating setback.
Out of touch Rishi Sunak doesn't regularly read papers or online news sites
Two of his school’s buildings were built using Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete – RAAC – a cheap, lightweight form of concrete with a lifespan of just 30 years, and now crumbling. So the school is closed.
Distraught Michelle explained: “It’s been completely out of the blue, and our whole year has been thrown into chaos by the school getting in touch to say that they aren’t opening.”
Replacing the RAAC will take at least six weeks, by which time it will be October half-term, so it looks likely that Taylor and his peers won’t be back in the classroom for months.
He, and the thousands of other innocent kids caught up in this utterly avoidable mess, have been let down yet again by… (if only this was a GSCE exam question, no one would get it wrong) all together now: The Government.
And this fiasco, added to a long list of unforgivable failures, leads one to a somewhat unarguable conclusion: The Tories hate children.
They voted to let them go hungry until shamed into feeding them by a footballer. They made them do a chaotic school hokey cokey throughout Covid – in, out, in, out, spread it all about.
They put Gavin Williamson in charge of deciding what should happen with exams in the pandemic – the results of which are being suffered to this day.
They’ve been warned about the dangers of RAAC, repeatedly and for years. In 2021 and 2022 the Office of Government Property issued formal warning notices that the material was “now life-expired and liable to collapse”.
Jonathan Slater, a permanent secretary at the Department for Education for four years, clarified: “We weren’t just saying there’s a significant risk of fatality.
“We were saying there was a critical risk to life if this programme is not funded.”
All the scandals and sackings from Rishi Sunak's first 100 days in No10
And yet, guess what? Multiple choice this time:
A) This programme was funded.
B) This programme was not funded.
Rishi Sunak has personally donated $3million to a college in California, and more than £100,000 to the private school he attended, Winchester College. But when it comes to the schools that our kids go to, the Department for Education asked for money to rebuild 200 schools a year.
And Sunak, then the Chancellor, gave funding for just 50.
A quarter of what was needed. And all that leads us to where we are now – an incredible situation, with schools having to close in case the buildings collapse while our children are inside them.
Top marks, Prime Minister.
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