It is back to school day across the country — or it ought to be. Instead, pupils at 104 schools and colleges, eight of them in London, face serious disruption after full and partial closures of the buildings they use over fears about a catastrophic collapse of the concrete used in construction. At any time this would be disastrous, but at the start of the academic term and after years of severe Covid disruption it is unacceptable.
Gillian Keegan, the sixth education secretary in the last two years, this morning revealed that 1,500 schools have yet to return surveys on the presence of the dangerous concrete — known as reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC). Clearly ministers do not yet know the scale of the problem.
