“Behind these statistics, there will be school and college leadership teams, staff, and students dealing with a very difficult situation. It is to their immense credit that they are managing this disruption so well and that education is continuing to be delivered across all settings.
“The government’s handling of this issue has not been so exemplary however, and this was compounded by the recent Autumn Statement in which no extra capital funding was provided to address the RAAC crisis.
“This means that the cost of replacing buildings affected by RAAC must come from a pot of money that was already nowhere enough to deal with the £11.4 billion backlog of work needed across the rest of school estate even before the RAAC issue.
“RAAC-affected schools and colleges need certainty over funding not just for temporary mitigation works but for long-term solutions. The government must also commit to capital spending in general which addresses years of underinvestment in education.”