At the end of what has never been a silly season (what with climate change, high inflation and all the good stuff internationally…) what do we find out at the end of the holidays?: that schools can’t be returned to.
There are families up and down the country preparing their kids for the fact that what they already prepared for does not exist: the new school year in a familiar venue (or worse, their start at a new school). This is because the buildings young people are supposed to be educated in can no longer be considered safe. From a government that has ridiculed ‘safe spaces‘ at every turn, this seems like taking the piss.
The issue is, that many of our state schools have been constructed from a material called RAAC – ‘reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete’ – which is less structurally sound than common-or-garden concrete. When is a bubbly thing as robust as a solid thing? It appears that the lightweight and cheaper nature of this material blinded developers to its issues in terms of long-term sustainability. Schools are at risk of falling down, their rooves collapsing, their upper storeys crashing down.
And these architectural missteps may not seem as bad, if it weren’t for the general picture of where we are right now in the UK. The issues around school buildings make a perfect metaphor for what Conservative government has meant for children.
During the pandemic, our government hardly prioritised children, and while Covid-19 highlighted the many inequalities affecting their educational, social and health needs, young people have been decidedly missing from recovery agendas. The government might reply that it has devoted funds to much-needed ‘catch-up’ schemes for the most disadvantaged pupils, but the infrastructure to deliver them is decidedly threadbare. In a damning piece in yesterday’s FT, Jennifer Williams outlined how a school in Oldham had had to the return the money for this service, as teachers were not coming to Oldham to run the classes, and the school bus couldn’t incorporate evening runs to classes elsewhere. Families in this deprived catchment were often unable to afford the essentials of school life: stationery, uniform, even food. The article charted how schools increasingly fulfil a welfare and citizens advice function, as well as an educational one.
Since 2010, governments have slashed the social safety net and the public services which support communities. Children have been virtually absent from the concerns of politicians who have concentrated on maintaining power while showing increasingly little interest in what to do with it. The gems of the British state: the NHS, public art and culture, universal child benefit, decent social housing, have been run into the ground, abolished or sold. Children are encouraged to aspire to be doctors (ha!) engineers, tech industry players – ideally by attaining a degree from Oxbridge – perish the thought that they may wish to learn a language or engage in critical thinking. Despite the success of Oxford’s PPE degree in delivering Cabinet ministers, the government is strangely silent on the merits of humanities degrees, except when they are equated with ‘Mickey Mouse’ – that’s a character too friendly to grace the walls of a reception centre for child migrants. Heaven forbid that children should be welcomed anywhere.
Yesterday Penny Mordaunt suggested that a new National Service might provide the means for disengaged youth to reconnect with society. The right-leaning think tank Onward proclaimed that this was a solution for ‘unmoored’ young people to become more mentally resilient and to feel increased national pride. Strangely absent from these claims, was any analysis of how youth got here – could growing mental ill-health and lowering of sights be anything to do with an economy loaded against the young, a housing market out of reach, student debt and stagnant wages? I wonder who might be responsible for these things? Conservatives seem to look in wonder at the landscape around them, seeing the mess as something outside of their purview. Children and young people wade through the morass, and can see that the straws to clutch at are further apart then ever. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, this government has no time for kids.
Tags: buildings, Conservatives, Mickey Mouse, National Service, RAAC, schools
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