Speeches by MacAlister.

“To set the scene, the problems that we have inherited on the school estate are fairly well known and understood. Some 43% of the estate was built in the post-war to 1980 period. Many of those buildings are close to or at the end of their intended life by this point, which leaves the Government with a major challenge in…”

“I accept your point, and I accept that it has an impact on schools, which is why it is so important that we can get both, on top of the rebuilding programme, to ensure that schools that need to be wholly rebuilt are rebuilt as soon as possible and that we maintain schools before they get to that critical point, because…”

“We are trying to move away from exactly what you describe, as almost spot-procuring a bespoke arrangement for a school. The SRP is designed to essentially partner with a smaller number of organisations that have a good track record, where we have confidence in the designs and where off-site prefabrication and other thi…”

“I appreciate that—thank you very much, Chair, and thank you to the Committee for your interest in this. I will just share some brief remarks: I am the Minister for Children and Families, with the responsibility of covering school buildings as well. Jonathan Dewsbury is the Director of Estates at the Department for Educ…”

“The need for a fund like the condition improvement fund is a symptom of not having resolved the issues about the group-level status of schools. If you have lots of small, individual, stand-alone academies or small groups, it is very hard for them to manage their estate where the sensitivity relating to what you might n…”

“Jon will talk you through it, but it has learned lessons from other construction projects that have failed.”

“If the Committee has any further ideas, I welcome hearing how to include aspects.”

“I will let Jon come in in a moment. We have been really keen to ramp up the school rebuilding programme in terms of the overall number of schools, taking it from 500 to 750 over the course of the 10-year programme, and to get those completed by 2034. The original plan from the previous Government was to have 50 project…”

“We can write and share that with you.”

“This is an important point, and I am very happy to follow up with specific schools or constituents who have been in touch on that, and to look into it. Jon, I don’t know if there is anything you want to mention about the SRP.”

“Jon will talk you through it, but it has learned lessons from other construction projects that have failed.”

“The first thing to say is that there is nothing inherently less quality about modern methods of construction and modular builds. This is actually a huge opportunity for the Government, and the Department for Education is ahead of other Government Departments in its use of modular building, in terms of speed, getting on…”

“To set the scene, the problems that we have inherited on the school estate are fairly well known and understood. Some 43% of the estate was built in the post-war to 1980 period. Many of those buildings are close to or at the end of their intended life by this point, which leaves the Government with a major challenge in…”

“Jon will come in on this, but now that we have a multi-year spending review settlement, we want to give schools and responsible bodies the ability to plan ahead exactly as you described, Chair, so that they can sequence projects. I am not sure we have worked out fully yet whether that will mean we give them, as respons…”

“I will come to Jon again in a moment. First, I was obviously not a Minister in the previous Government, but I am here representing the Government, and I am very happy to share reflections looking back through the paperwork and the experience of the RAAC crisis. The first few weeks and months of that process for schools…”

“Jon will also come in on this. The rebuilding programme has done quite a lot of the heavy lifting of the capital works that have been needed for the RAAC work. The ordering of projects in SRP has been arranged around prioritising those RAAC projects.”

“I accept your point, and I accept that it has an impact on schools, which is why it is so important that we can get both, on top of the rebuilding programme, to ensure that schools that need to be wholly rebuilt are rebuilt as soon as possible and that we maintain schools before they get to that critical point, because…”

“If it is useful to the people who provided evidence to the Committee, direct them to me and the Department on that question. It would be interesting for me to explore with Jon and the team how exactly to sequence that and allocate money in a way that helps them.”

“When we look at the condition data collection which sets out where the whole school and college estate is, there is a significant overlap between schools that have RAAC and schools that were at the end of their intended life anyway. At Myton school, where I was last week, RAAC is not the only issue; the school is also …”

“The Government recognise that this is a major challenge. We have inherited a backlog that has worsened due to not staying on top of the crucial maintenance works. For example, with RAAC, the deterioration gets worse, resulting in leaks in roofs and so on, which means that there is a cascade effect of rundown buildings …”