As the summer holidays come to an end, thousands of children in England will not be returning to school. Instead, many of these will have to take part in lockdown-reminiscent online lessons.
With next-to-no notice, the government late last week ordered 156 schools, school nurseries, and higher education colleges to immediately shut, either fully or partially, due to buildings made with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC). These buildings are unsafe and are liable to collapse. The announcement has put on display a British educational institution that is literally crumbling.
In its guidance—published on Thursday, August 31st—for impacted schools, the Department for Education admitted that “the government has been aware of RAAC in public sector buildings since 1994.” Just shy of three decades have passed, this being the average lifespan of the cheap, less durable material. In an allegedly advanced nation, the government said schools should have “adequate contingencies in place for the eventuality that RAAC-affected buildings need to be vacated at short notice.”
The Conservative Party’s lack of action on this critical issue speaks to its character, and that of establishment Tories more broadly, according to Molly Kingsley of child advocacy group UsForThem. She told The European Conservative:
That unprecedented disruption to children’s schooling from 2020 to 2022 was justified under the banner of collective safetyism for a virus which posed statistically less risk to children’s lives than being hit by lightning, but the very real threat of lumps of concrete falling on our kids’ heads has been met, until now, with inaction, and speaks to the disregard in which children are held by our political ruling class.
For the fourth year in a row, children are once again being asked to switch to remote as if this were an acceptable pedagogical alternative to in-person schooling rather than the failed socio-educational experiment that nearly all key education stakeholders, including [education inspector] Ofsted, have confirmed it to be.
Proper and lasting investment in children and their education is a decade, at least, overdue—we can only hope, now, that the next government gives children and education the priority and care they so need after 15 years of disastrous Conservative Party rule.
It is not yet clear how long the impacted children will have to stay at home or be educated in temporary educational settings. Reports over the weekend suggest the situation was worse than originally believed due to the presence of asbestos, meaning schools could be closed for months. But it is certain that any amount of time will be heavily disruptive, particularly after all that time spent in lockdown.
Groups like the National Education Union, which represents teachers, would be wise to remember the costs of this period; they are calling the situation now “absolutely disgraceful,” although they called for school closures during the COVID scare.
