CRUMBLING concrete is still worrying schoolchildren and their parents in Colchester nine months after a collapse-prone material closed classrooms across the country.
Education secretary Gillian Keegan told headteachers to close classrooms where reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac) was present in September last year.
The Raac crisis caused widespread chaos across the county – with schools in Essex being affected more than anywhere else in the country.
The Gilberd School, one of the biggest schools in Colchester, has been badly affected with Year 7 pupils being taught at the nearby Trinity School since September.
A school rebuilding programme announced by the government in February included 46 schools across Essex where buildings would be rebuilt or refurbished.
Under the scheme, another 22 schools in the county would receive grants to fund the removal of Raac from their buildings where works will typically be smaller in scale.
But things could change depending on who takes the keys to No 10 after the general election on July 4.
Zandra Ndulue, whose daughters are pupils at Thurstable School in Tiptree, in the Witham constituency – where “stilts in the walls” are keeping children safe, is desperate for the issue to be resolved.
The mum-of-five said: “The school needs fixing because you never know what’s going to happen. It could suddenly go down on the kids.
“My Year 11 daughter feels her exams won’t go very well because of how they were taught online at the start of the year. I don’t want the same for my daughter who’s going into Year 10 in September.
“They need to knock that building down at the start of the summer holidays and rebuild it.”
What do the election candidates say?
We asked the parliamentary candidates for Colchester to share their thoughts on the Raac crisis and what their party will do to address it in 200 words or less.
Conservative
Conservative candidate James Cracknell said: “Currently all schools with Raac issues are on the school rebuilding programme and that remains the plan after the general election.”
Labour
Labour’s Pam Cox said: “So many schools in Essex have suffered unnecessarily for months because of crumbling concrete.
“The Gilberd School in Highwoods was one of the worst affected and was unable to open its doors at all at the vital start of the school year back in September. That was really unsettling for pupils, especially those joining in Year 7 and those in their crucial GCSE year.
“The head, Mrs Exley, acted swiftly to make things safe but her staff are still having to teach in temporary classrooms. Teachers and pupils at Thomas Lord Audley School also suffered disruption.
“All of this was avoidable. The Conservative government had known about the Raac concrete problem for years but just failed to act.
“One of the first things that the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition did was to cancel Labour’s Schools for the Future programme and to shelve vital repair and refurbishment work. Many pupils, parents and teachers have paid a heavy price for that failure.”
Lib Dem
Martin Goss, the city’s Liberal Democrat candidate, said: “The Raac crisis in the UK and more closely in Colchester is a travesty of huge proportion with many schools affected locally.
“This has impacted communities, children’s education and impacted family life with some children having to attend other schools. Impact and cost are high.
“The Liberal Democrats realise that rebuilding or repairing schools is not going to be completed overnight, but it must be a high priority for funding from the Department for Education and each school particularly in Colchester must publish their completion plans along with the contractors who have been appointed.
“Schools are to be commended for the way they've had to handle these emergency building works across the affected schools in Colchester.
“In September 2023 the Liberal Democrats won a vote in the House of Lords on an amendment forcing the government to publish a register of schools and hospitals in serious disrepair, including those impacted by the Raac scandal.
“The amendment to the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill was tabled by the Liberal Democrats with a majority of 35. It will force the government to publish a full public register of schools and hospitals that have had to close buildings because they are deemed unsafe, including those with Raac. The list would also include buildings closed due to disrepair and those in need of major rebuilding and refurbishment.
“The list would have to be published within a month of the bill passing and would then be reviewed every three months to ensure it contains up-to-date information.”
Green
Sara Ruth, who is standing for the Green Party in Colchester, said: “The first problem is the systematic smashing of funding for maintaining our buildings. If we were actually maintaining our infrastructure this would have been picked up on long before it became dangerous.
“The other, perhaps bigger, problem is that we are designing buildings to last a mere 50 years.
“If we want to hit the carbon reduction targets that we need to in order to avert the worst climate changes, we need to do away with the mentality that buildings can be thrown away. We need to go back to designing buildings that will stand for two to three hundred years.
“I would work to make sure public institutions have the funding to actually maintain their buildings, and we would push for the regulations to assume a minimum design life far longer than the current standards.”
Terence Longstaff, the Reform UK candidate, did not respond to the Gazette’s request for comment.
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