Is your child's school safe?
Published
No less than 1.5m children in England are spending their days in dilapidated, unfit school buildings, according to a shocking new investigation by The Guardian newspaper.
A study of public sector buildings, including schools, found thousands are in need of urgent repair, with conditions so bad in many that they are endangering the lives of those who spend time in them. One school in Cumbria had to be evacuated because inspectors found the floor could collapse at any moment.
The investigation has prompted calls for ministers to spend hundreds of millions of pounds more to carry out immediate improvements.
Ministers have blamed the previous government for underspending on Britain’s public buildings for years. The problem is worst in the Midlands, where 30 per cent of schools were found to be either unsafe, ageing or affected by a large number of defects relative to their size. And there are signs that government schemes to rectify the problem are failing to do so. The school rebuilding programme, launched in 2022 with a target of 50 schools a year, had completed work on just 24 schools by the end of September 2024.
