Austerity is behind the RAAC crisis
The RAAC crisis engulfing the school sector is a cautionary tale for any political party hoping to run the country, not least the Conservatives.
Buildings constructed with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete between the 1930s and 1990s are now found to have the structural integrity of an Aero chocolate bar. It would be funny if it weren’t so serious.
The current Tory Government can no more shoulder the blame for the material used in the construction of such schools than Rishi Sunak can be blamed for mistakes during the Suez crisis.
But the Conservatives can be held entirely accountable for not rectifying the problem by properly investing in modernising the school estate during the past 13 years.
Having scrapped New Labour’s often profligate Building Schools for the Future programme in 2010, the Conservatives have failed to properly invest in the fabric of school buildings to the point where classrooms are literally collapsing.
After the financial crash, the education secretary, Michael Gove, viewed the £55bn building programme as prime fat that needed trimming and by 2010 it was scrapped in a chaotic fashion, leaving thousands of schools in desperate need of updating.
Research by the Commons Library in February this year found that capital spending on schools had declined by 50 per cent between 2010-11 and 2021-22.
Ministers may now wonder – if it was too expensive to borrow to invest in school buildings when interest rates were at near zero – what will they do now that borrowing costs are at 5.25 per cent?
The Government can rightly claim that day-to-day school spending has remained at a decent rate, but the failure to invest in the bricks and mortar is plain to see.
