Pupils across England are being taught in church and village halls, temporary classrooms and remotely at home, as crumbling school buildings are ordered to shut because of to safety concerns, an investigation has revealed.
In some cases, where an entire school has been forced to close, hundreds of pupils are split across neighbouring schools to take their lessons, while others are sent home to resume online learning, as they did during the pandemic.
After the immediate crisis of finding alternative accommodation, pupils and teachers can find themselves in temporary classrooms for months, if not years, while school and local authorities try to come up with a long-term solution.
The findings reveal the disruptive impact that school closures because of unsafe buildings have on pupils, whose education has already been interrupted by Covid. They also come just days after a highly critical report by the public spending watchdog, the National Audit Office, said an estimated 700,000 children are being taught in unsafe or ageing school buildings that needed major repairs.
It also revealed that more than a third of school buildings were past their estimated design lifespan, and specialists were carrying out urgent checks on almost 600 schools at possible risk of structural collapse because of crumbling concrete, with many more schools unaware of the danger lurking in their buildings.
Ministers admitted earlier this year that 39 schools had partly or fully closed since 2019 owing to unsafe buildings, including structural and general condition problems, such as roofing and boiler failures.
