The education secretary has ordered school leaders to “get off their backsides” to complete surveys into whether their buildings contain dangerous crumbling concrete.
Gillian Keegan said one in 20 schools is yet to complete a questionnaire sent out last year and called on leaders to respond quickly as the crisis deepens.
The Department for Education (DfE) sent surveys to the bodies responsible for school buildings - including trusts and city councils - to discover whether their buildings contained reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC), following the 2018 collapse of a school ceiling. RAAC is a potentially dangerous material used to construct schools, colleges, and other buildings between the Fifties and mid-Seventies in the UK.
The lightweight form of concrete has been described as “80 per cent air” and “like an Aero Bar” and its presence in schools prompted the closure of more than 100 days before the start of the new school year.
Speaking to Jeremy Vine on Tuesday, Ms Keegan said: “There is 5 per cent of schools that have not responded to the survey.
“Now, hopefully, all this publicity will make them get off their backsides.
“What I would like them to do is to respond because I want to be the secretary of state that knows exactly in every school where there is RAAC and takes action.”
The education secretary’s comments came a day after she was forced to apologise for a sweary rant in which she accused colleagues of having “sat on their a***” over collapsing schools.
Gillian Keegan was filmed voicing her frustrations about the response to the Raac concrete scandal after it emerged that Mr Sunak had cut funding for school rebuilding when he was chancellor.
