St Leonard’s Catholic school in County Durham was one of only two secondary schools required to fully close after the Department for Education (DfE) raised the alarm last year about scores of potentially unsafe school buildings affected by reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete ( Raac ), which is prone to sudden collapse after it has exceeded its life span.
Since then, many of the 1,400 pupils have been bussed to makeshift classes at different sites, including a Radisson hotel and Ushaw College, a 19th-century former Catholic seminary, losing valuable lesson time because of travel, the University of Durham report says.
Overstretched teachers have delivered lessons to up to 240 pupils at a time, pastoral sessions have been scrapped to squeeze in more academic work and single subjects have been taught in blocks, sometimes for a whole day, often in halls converted into makeshift classrooms where noise carries and it is difficult to concentrate.
The situation has been so dire that the chief executive of the school trust said it was “like we were going through the pandemic again, but on our own”, evoking the chaos and uncertainty of Covid that led to schools being closed and exams cancelled.
Pupils’ emotional health and well-being have been affected, with fears they are not ready to face their exams, while the reputational damage done to the school has reportedly led to pupils and staff leaving. Pupils say it has been even worse than Covid, seeing their peers in other schools progress as normal while they fall behind.
Esta historia es de la edición January 19, 2024 de The Guardian.
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