Pupils in England sent to churches and village halls as crumbling schools close

Pupils across England are being taught in church and village halls, temporary classrooms and remotely at home, as crumbling school buildings are ordered to shut because of to safety concerns, an investigation has revealed.

In some cases, where an entire school has been forced to close, hundreds of pupils are split across neighbouring schools to take their lessons, while others are sent home to resume online learning, as they did during the pandemic.

After the immediate crisis of finding alternative accommodation, pupils and teachers can find themselves in temporary classrooms for months, if not years, while school and local authorities try to come up with a long-term solution.

The findings reveal the disruptive impact that school closures because of unsafe buildings have on pupils, whose education has already been interrupted by Covid. They also come just days after a highly critical report by the public spending watchdog, the National Audit Office, said an estimated 700,000 children are being taught in unsafe or ageing school buildings that needed major repairs.

It also revealed that more than a third of school buildings were past their estimated design lifespan, and specialists were carrying out urgent checks on almost 600 schools at possible risk of structural collapse because of crumbling concrete, with many more schools unaware of the danger lurking in their buildings.

Ministers admitted earlier this year that 39 schools had partly or fully closed since 2019 owing to unsafe buildings, including structural and general condition problems, such as roofing and boiler failures.

A freedom of information request by the Liberal Democrats has now revealed the location – though not identity – of each school, and how pupils have been affected. They say the true number of affected schools may be far higher, as schools are not obliged to report building-related closures to the Department for Education (DfE).

In one school in Hertfordshire, which had to close its entire site permanently in February 2022, all pupils were sent home to study remotely for three weeks. Face-to-face lessons resumed in a church hall for some children while others went to neighbouring schools, a situation that continued for three months, after which pupils were moved into temporary classrooms while waiting for a long-term solution.

In another case, an Essex school, which the Liberal Democrats have matched to local reports of King Edmund School in Rochford, closed in November 2022 after traces of asbestos were found in the rubble of a demolished building. Pupils were sent home to learn online for two months while the site was made safe.

And a school in Sunderland, identified in local reports as Burnside Academy in Houghton-le-Spring, closed in March 2021 because of pumping and drainage issues. Pupils were bussed to neighbouring schools for almost eight months, then returned to lessons in temporary classrooms until the school reopened earlier this month.

In other examples, two mobile classroom blocks at a school in North Somerset were declared unsafe within nine months of each other, while pupils at one Devon school took classes in the local village hall for a week and a half after their school was forced to close temporarily in June 2022.

The Liberal Democrat education spokesperson, Munira Wilson, called on ministers to clear the backlog of repairs so parents could be certain their child’s school was safe. “Each shut school is a concrete sign of years of Conservative neglect of our school buildings.

“Conservative ministers should apologise for the months of disruption that thousands of pupils have had to their learning. Whilst successive Conservative prime ministers cut capital spending on education, pupils have been forced to study at home, in church halls or were bussed miles to other schools.”

The DfE has been contacted for comment but previously said: “We are investing in 500 projects for new and refurbished school buildings through our school rebuilding programme. On top of this, we have allocated over £1bn since 2015 for keeping schools safe and operational, including £1.8bn committed for 2023-24.”