this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
86 points (97.8% liked)

United Kingdom

4034 readers
100 users here now

General community for news/discussion in the UK.

Less serious posts should go in [email protected] or [email protected]
More serious politics should go in [email protected].

Try not to spam the same link to multiple feddit.uk communities.
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.

Posts should be related to UK-centric news, and should be either a link to a reputable source, or a text post on this community.

Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.

If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread.

Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.

Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Amid a mounting political and educational crisis over schools built with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac) from the 1950s to 1990s, the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, said it was still not known how many might be affected, and how many might need to close, with engineers still to inspect more sites.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Rishi Sunak refused to properly fund a school rebuilding programme when he was chancellor, despite officials presenting evidence that there was “a critical risk to life” from crumbling concrete panels, the Department for Education’s former head civil servant has said.

Keegan insisted the DfE had taken “a very cautious approach” to the issues, and that parents should be reassured that “the vast majority of children will be going back today”.

In a damning interview on Monday morning, Slater said two surveys of Raac in schools had uncovered the extent of work needed on a building method supposed to be time-limited to about 30 years of use, with a risk in some cases of sudden and catastrophic failure beyond this.

While he was permanent secretary, in 2018, a concrete block fell from the roof of a primary school, Slater added, “so it wasn’t just a risk.

Munira Wilson, the party’s education spokesperson, said: “This bombshell revelation shows the blame for this concrete crisis lies firmly at Rishi Sunak’s door.

Speaking earlier on Sky News, Keegan said the DfE “isn’t strictly responsible for the [school] buildings”, as they are maintained by councils or academy chains, but that it would fund any work from the department’s existing budget.


The original article contains 651 words, the summary contains 205 words. Saved 69%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!