Concrete evidence: UK’s school buildings failure goes back decades

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The crumbling concrete of British schools highlights a lack of spending on construction and maintenance decades ago.

Despite Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and former top education ministry civil servants blaming each other on Monday for the deepening crisis in buildings made of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac), available data shows that public capital spending is generally low. at the expected level. Legacy needs to be maintained.

This deficit has existed for years, with occasional spikes in spending, such as during Labour’s “Building Schools for the Future” program between 2009 and 2011. The program was canceled in 2010 by then Conservative education secretary Michael Gove.

However, the neglected underspending of educational building structures is compounded by differing responsibilities across the UK between central government, devolved administrations, local authorities, academy trusts and schools themselves.

The National Audit Office said in a June report that despite these complications in England, “the condition of school grounds is deteriorating and there are safety concerns in some types of buildings”.

The spending watchdog has made it clear that the Ministry of Education is responsible for the overall financing of capital expenditure in schools.

“After years of underinvestment, the overall condition of the estate is deteriorating, with around 700,000 students studying at a school which the responsible bodies or DfE believe needs major rebuilding or refurbishment,” the NAO said.

It added: “There is a huge gap between available funding and what the Department of Education assesses is needed to meet its objectives to ensure school buildings are safe and in good condition for those who study and work there.”

Luke Sibieta, a fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said no one should be surprised by the dire state of the school buildings. “Anyone paying attention to school capex and construction could have foreseen this. The only surprise is that the culprit is concrete.”

The NAO report indicates that asbestos, wiring, heating and ventilation — not Raac — are the biggest structural problems around school buildings and the most expensive areas for necessary repairs to schools.

Former Education Department permanent secretary Jonathan Slater on Monday accused Sunak of halving an agreed plan to rebuild or refurbish at least 100 schools a year by 2020.

Officials deny there was ever a plan to rebuild so many schools each year, but it’s clear that actual capital expenditures have not grown rapidly in recent years.

According to the IFS, Sibieta calculates that in the three years to 2023-24 school capital expenditure in England was around 26% lower than in the three years preceding 2008-09, before the surge in ‘Building Schools for the Future’ funding.

Inflation also undercuts the Treasury’s calculations of real capital gains. In the 2021 Spending Review, the government plans to increase DfE’s real capital spending by 2.2% per annum. After the rapid price increase, the actual increase will be closer to 1.3%.

In addition, the Ministry of Education is often unable to spend its entire capital budget. In the latest Government Public Expenditure Statistics document, total public sector capital purchases for education services across the UK public sector was essentially flat in cash terms between 2018-19 and 2022-23, suggesting that real resources for education may will be significantly reduced. school building.

Officials said on Monday that the data showed insufficient spending on capital plans, pointing to the ability to address the Lark Concrete crisis without additional departmental funding or tapping into Treasury reserves.

However, if repairing the concrete proves to be costly, planned capital expenditures in other areas of the school over the next few years will inevitably be delayed or cancelled.

The UK Department of Education has been contacted for comment.

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