‘Hot Mic’ Gillian’s dumbest announcement yet

Under-fire education secretary Gillian Keegan wants you to know ’most schools are unaffected’ by the concrete crisis. Good grief, minister, ‘most’ doesn’t really cut it when it comes to keeping children safe, writes Tom Peck

Who needs a balloon full of laughing gas to have a fit of the hysterics when you have the news? (REUTERS)

Collectors of incidents involving education secretary Gillian Keegan are finding their lives getting easier and easier. On Monday, we had to wait until after lunch for her to demand to know why no one is telling her what a “f*****g good job” she is doing, with regard to the closure of hundreds of schools that have been declared unsafe.

Twenty four hours later, or more accurately, merely 21 hours, she was at it again. For reasons only she can truly understand, she has now put out a short statement on social media, complete with little infographics in Tory party colours but with the Department for Education branding, which is already at least partly dubious behaviour.

The point she has chosen to stress, with regard to the very real risk that concrete classrooms could collapse on children’s heads, is that “MOST SCHOOLS UNAFFECTED”. It was right there – she even put it in capitals.

That most schools are unaffected is probably already known, is it not? Most parents, for example, know whether or not their children have gone back to school. They know whether or not they’ve had a letter saying they can’t go in.

Or, in one case I happen to know about, a school where 70 per cent of the children are on free school meals has had its crumbly concrete canteen shut down, so they’re all being given pre-packed sandwiches in their classrooms instead, in all likelihood going without the only hot meal they’d have got that day.

When it comes to the risk of collapse of schools, the safety of children, “most” isn’t really good enough, is it? School buildings not falling apart with children inside them is the kind of test where you’re really looking to score 100 per cent. So widespread has the online piss-taking been that the Labour Party has even got in the act, pointing out that “Most beachgoers not eaten by big shark.”

It does bring to mind the extremely well-known Steve Coogan sketch, in which a night security guard lists all the years in which no one died on his watch, except for 1986, when someone did.

Not that any of this was sufficient to prevent the truly indefatigable from returning, again, to yesterday’s comments like the proverbial dog to its own vomit. She has now explained, to BBC Radio 2 this time, why she was so angry yesterday that no one had thanked her for everything she’d done.

The reason she’s so annoyed, it transpires, is because headteachers all around the country are letting her down, and what they need to go is “get off their backsides” and do what she’s told them to do.

Keegan reckons that plenty of headteachers still haven’t responded to the survey she sent them about crumbly concrete and they really should, because “I want to be the secretary of state that takes action.” So come on headteachers, what more potent rallying cry could there be? Put down whatever it is you’re piddling about with now, like massive budget cuts, or where the Year 9s are going to sit that won’t kill them, and get that survey filled in, otherwise Keegan might not get the credit she so desperately deserves.

Meanwhile, the schools minister Nick Gibb has been on the radio to agree with Rishi Sunak that it is “completely wrong” to suggest he only approved the rebuilding of 50 schools a year, when a figure of 200 had been recommended. Because actually he agreed to a figure of 500 over ten years, and if you think that’s the same as 50 a year, well you should count yourself lucky that your school wasn’t shut the day you got taught to divide by 10.

There are other bits of basic maths to bear in mind. At a rate of 50 schools a year, it would take 440 years to refurbish the country’s 22,500, which somewhat outstrips not just the 30-year recommended safe structural life of aerated concrete, but every structure known to man. If Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, which first opened in 1598, had been a school, it would be due its first refurbishment in just 15 years time.

All this, naturally, is a big distraction for a government desperate to get on with tackling the huge challenges facing Britain today, like, what’s that? Yes, that’s right, two-year jail terms for recreational users of nitrous oxide, which is extremely close to being entirely harmless, but has led to a very slight uptick in litter in a very small number of places and that won’t do.

Still, it should at least save people a few quid. You hardly need to suck on a balloon full of laughing gas to have a fit of the hysterics – just switch on the news. It never gets any less ridiculous.