‘A nightmare’: Inside one of first schools closed over crumbling concrete scandal

In Leicester, Colin Drury finds teachers and parents scrambling to deal with a primary school forced to shut out of the blue

Willowbrook Mead Primary Academy in Leicester has been orderd to shut following the discovery that some panels made out of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) have led to a number of structure failures (Joseph Walshe / SWNS)

Because of a quirk of tradition, the summer holidays end a week earlier in Leicester than in the rest of the country.

So when the government announced on Thursday that 156 schools across the country were at risk of collapsing, one of those schools – Willowbrook Mead Primary Academy in the East Midlands city – was already full of children.

“My understanding is they literally evacuated the place,” said parent Raj Kaur on Friday. “The first most parents knew about it was when we arrived for pick-up. All the children were out on the field. It was awful. Children were crying. My first thought was, ‘Has something terrible happened?’”

To some extent, something terrible had.

Willowbrook Mead Primary Academy will remain closed on Monday because parts of the school building could be prone to collapsing (Joseph Walshe / SWNS)

The school, it seems, will be among the worst affected anywhere in England after the Department for Education ordered all educational buildings constructed with a certain type of concrete – reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) – to be closed immediately.

Roughly half of Willowbrook Mead – a 470-pupil school serving an area of high deprivation – is made of the stuff.

This means most pupils will now learn online for the next 10 days before two entire year groups – 3 and 4 – are moved to two other city schools. Years 5 and 6, meanwhile, will be squashed into spare classrooms and shared areas away from the danger zone.

Worse still, perhaps, it is unclear how long the disruption will last – although some parents say teachers have told them it could be well into 2025.

On Friday morning, staff could be seen moving chairs, tables and bookcases from an apparently affected building into a portable cabin, while sports equipment was being loaded into vans. Workmen were drilling into a chimney and a flat roof.

Principal Hannah Sandy-Sharpe was onsite but declined to speak to the media.

“It’s a nightmare,” said Kaur, a single mother of two daughters, one in year 3 and one in year 5. “There are a lot of parents who are really unhappy. It’s going to cause so much disruption to so many people – just as everyone was beginning to get over all the problems caused by Covid.”

Staff move furntiure and equipment to a new venue after the school was shut by the government on Thursday (Joseph Walshe / SWNS)

For her personally, having two children now effectively attending two different primary schools will mean she can no longer get to her own job – as a trainee teaching assistant – on time.

“I’ve spoken to my school and they’re very understanding, but how long can they accept me being late?” she asked.

Both her children, meanwhile, suffer from severe anxiety. Her youngest, Kaur said, “couldn’t sleep last night because of all the uncertainty”.

The youngster asked her mum what would happen. “And all I could say was, ‘I don’t know’, because the school isn’t really telling us at the moment,” she said.

Criticism of Willowbrook Mead was, in fact, largely limited on Friday.

Laura Smith, whose children attend Willowbrook Mead Primary Academy, questioned why the decision to close wasn’t taken earlier (Colin Drury/The Independent)

Some parents wondered if the school should be setting up mobile classrooms on its ample playing fields instead of shipping two year groups out to other institutions a mile or so away. One councillor, Conservative Abdul Osman, suggested The Mead Educational Trust, which runs the school, had known about the potential problems since June. “I’ve had a lot of parents asking why it wasn’t more proactive in seeing – and preparing for – this issue ahead,” he said.

But, mainly, parents here questioned why the government had left it until the school term had begun before making its shock order.

“If they’d made this decision in July, the headteacher could have made other plans and we wouldn’t now be rushing around trying to make the best of an absolutely awful situation,” said mother of five Laura Smith. “There’d still be disruption but it would be far less because everyone would have had six weeks to prepare.”

She said that all students were to be supplied with Chromebook computers for the period of online learning.

The government became aware over the summer that more schools with RAAC are at risk of collapse (Joseph Walshe / SWNS)

“But that still doesn’t help parents who now have to take time off work to stay with them,” said Ms Smith.

“We’ve only just got them off our hands again after the holidays.”

Her youngest has just begun in reception class. Because the younger children started after the rest of the school, his first day was Thursday – the day of the evacuation.

“So, that’s not exactly how we would have wanted it,” said Ms Smith. “He’s been so excited about moving up to big school all summer and he’d had a brilliant day – this just feels very difficult for him.”

More than 100 schools in England have been told they must shut some buildings due to safety fears (Joseph Walshe / SWNS)

The Mead Educational Trust told The Independent it would not be speaking to media but chief executive Sarah Ridley said in a prepared statement: “Of course, the safety of pupils and staff is our first priority so we are taking every precaution so that no one is put at risk. We know this news will be concerning for everyone. We are doing everything we can to keep the inconvenience for families to an absolute minimum.”