Following the Government decision to close over 104 schools in the week before the autumn school term started, the Local Government Association said it had been warning about the risk of RAAC since 2018, when the roof of a school in Gravesend, Kent collapsed following the failure of RAAC panels. Julie McCulloch, director of policy at the Association of School and College Leaders, which represents mostly head teachers, said the government had "failed to invest sufficiently in the school estate. It should have put in place a programme to identify and remediate this risk at a much earlier stage." The National Audit Office also said it has been warning for several years of the risk of injury or death from a school building collapse. As recently as June this year, the NAO said the risk of a school building collapse because of RAAC was "very likely and critical", and it identified 572 English schools – out of the total 20,000 – where this concrete might be present.

The Government said in late August: “We have published new guidance advising education settings to vacate areas that are known to contain RAAC, unless or until suitable mitigations are in place. It is important to remember that currently less than 1% of settings are affected by this new guidance.” How quickly remediation of the problems at affected schools can take place is not yet clear. Nor are the costs of the rebuilding programme, nor how the DfE’s spending plans will be impacted. • See Analysis, Page 8, for more on the RAAC crisis