Crumbling schools have become a symbol of Tory incompetence

Editorial: Rishi Sunak is very quickly undermining his only selling point – that he is an antidote to the chaos of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss

The problems engulfing schools must be the government’s number one priority (PA)

As the Commons returns from its six-week summer break on Monday, Rishi Sunak’s much-trailed “reset” has got off to an inauspicious start. Schools in England are also due back but many pupils, parents and teachers faced an anxious wait over the weekend to find out whether their schools will operate normally. It emerged this summer that the reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete used in the construction of buildings between the 1950s and 1990s is more dangerous than previously thought.

There is growing evidence that ministers brushed aside warnings about the problem following the partial collapse of a secondary school roof in Kent in 2018, which thankfully happened over a weekend. The temptation to kick the can down the road was too great – an example of the costly short-termism that afflicts our politicians.

The response of ministers to the latest crisis is also worrying. Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, seen by some as one of the Conservatives’ rising stars, should have faced the music by appearing on the Sunday morning TV and radio programmes. Instead, the government tried to change the music by fielding the chancellor Jeremy Hunt, with a message that his economic strategy was finally paying dividends.

Meanwhile, a smiling Ms Keegan issued a bizarre video message to upbeat background music insisting that the vast majority of schools are unaffected.

The government is not yet sure of the scale of the problem and Mr Hunt’s comments did not inspire confidence. While he promised to “spend what it takes” to make schools safe, that sounded like another sticking plaster solution without a commitment to fund the rebuilding programme that will inevitably be needed.

When Ms Keegan does face the music in the Commons this week, she will be reminded that in 2010 the coalition led by David Cameron hastily scrapped the outgoing Labour government’s £55bn schools building programme as part of its austerity measures. A Tory party that condemned Labour for not “fixing the roof while the sun shines” on the public finances made a false economy when it came to fixing the roofs and walls of the nation’s schools.

Capital spending on schools fell by 50 per cent during a decade of austerity and today’s pupils, already badly affected by the pandemic, are now paying the price. As Rachel de Souza, the children’s commissioner for England, told the BBC: “We shouldn’t even have been in this situation. There should have been planning in place and a really good school building programme that has addressed this over the years.”

It is true that Mr Hunt has some rare good economic news to trumpet: the Office for National Statistics has said the economy at the end of 2021 was 0.6 per cent above pre-pandemic levels, having previously described it as 1.2 per cent smaller. While this is welcome, the public is not going to experience any kind of economic feelgood factor for many months yet. Voters will be much more worried about the immediate crisis in schools than Mr Hunt’s promise to conjure up efficiency savings by cutting administrative tasks for public sector staff – the oldest trick in the Whitehall book.

The problems engulfing schools must be the government’s number one priority. The timing at the start of a new school year could hardly be worse; crumbling concrete is becoming a symbol of our creaking public services after 13 years of Tory rule. Unless the government gets a grip quickly, this crisis will undermine Mr Sunak’s unique selling point: that he has delivered competence after the chaos of the Boris Johnson and Liz Truss regimes.

Such competence is a prerequisite for Mr Sunak to have any chance of averting a general election defeat next year. So the threat to the Tories’ prospects from what is happening in schools cannot be overstated.

In the US, middle-class “soccer moms” who ferry children to sport and other activities are a key group of voters wooed by politicians. In the UK, the chatter at the school gate is equally important. When Michael Gove, a reforming education secretary, was viewed as “toxic” by many teachers and parents, he was demoted by his friend Mr Cameron.

The Tories alienate people at the school gate at their peril.