The school year has just started in Englandbut not for everyone. Some institutes remained closed in extremis due to the risk of collapse. It’s a total storm in Westminster and the Conservative premier Rishi Sunak is at the center of controversy. There are many buildings, built between the 50s and 90s, made in raac (Reinforced Autoclaved Aeriated Concrete), the offending material, a sort of porous concrete similar in appearance to expanded polystyrene. The first alarm is dated 2018, when the collapse of some panels in a Kent school, with no injuries, had turned the problem into the spotlight.
Storm in Westminster
The case immediately becomes political. On the one hand the Minister of Education Gillian Keegan he had reassured in recent days that his department would cover the costs for making the structures safe and for any reconstructions, as well as providing alternative solutions to pupils in unusable schools. There is talk of hundreds of schools where the pupils were unable to attend the first day of lessons regularly. On the other hand, the crosshairs of the controversy are aimed at Prime Minister Sunak, accused by the former senior official of the Ministry of Education, Jonathan Slater, of having halved the fund for the restructuring of schools in 2021 when he held the key position of chancellor of the Exchequer in the government of Boris Johnson. The current premier defended himself by stating that it is “completely wrong” to accuse him and recalling the introduction on his initiative of a ten-year program focused on providing financial resources for the restructuring of 50 institutions a year. But the accusations against the conservative prime minister don’t end there. In fact, according to the Labor opposition, Sunak would have lowered the figure for the money destined for school construction, going from 765 million pounds in the two-year period 2019-20 to 416 million in 2021-22: a drop of 45%.
Keegan’s outburst
Tensions escalated further when Minister Keegan was the protagonist of an outburst after an interview with ITV. She said she was not thanked by anyone, presumably in government, for her “fucking good job” in a time of crisis while others stand by. Comments censored by Downing Street, which then prompted the minister, who has been in charge of Education for less than a year, to publicly apologize for what she said. As reported by the Guardian, at the moment it is not possible to estimate a damage count because the school buildings are in different conditions of degradation, some have only a destroyed wall, others are totally to be restored. But the problem could be much more serious. In fact, other public buildings, built with the RAAC, such as the headquarters of the courts built in the 1990s, will have to be checked.
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