A new report by the National Audit Office found that as many as 700,000 children are being taught in schools that require major repair, having far exceeded their safe lifespan 🖋️ Nadeine Asbali for ipaperviews
Nadeine Asbali: ‘Speak to any teacher and they will tell you of ceilings leaking with strange brown substances’
If you want a metaphor for the status of children in Britain, look no further than the crumbling, decaying buildings in which many of the nation’s youth are spending their formative years. You would be hard-pressed to find a symbol quite so potent for what faces the next generation than the roofs of schools literally caving in above their heads thanks in large part to long-term underfunding and chronic neglect.
As a state school teacher of seven years, this report didn’t surprise me. Speak to any teacher – particularly in the poorest areas where underfunding is compounded – and they will tell you of ceilings leaking with strange brown substances and heating that hasn’t worked for five winters in a row; chairs and tables taped together to keep them semi-usable; and entire sections of school buildings cordoned off because they are in such states of disrepair.
I could talk to you about what unsafe buildings mean for the already growing problem of teacher retention: the fact thatand how unfilled vacancies for this September are at an all-time high; how the prospect of spending 12-hour working days in a building where the ceiling could give way at any moment for a salary that amounts to a pay cut due to inflation is hardly a tantalising prospect.
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