Kids actually PREFER learning in portacabins than classrooms, Education Secretary says in RAAC grilling
THE gaffe-prone Education Secretary has claimed kids actually prefer learning in portacabins than proper classrooms.
Gillian Keegan was yesterday hauled over the coals as a further two dozen schools were found to have dodgy concrete.
The number grappling with Raac at the start of term jumped from 147 two weeks ago to 174.
Almost 250 temporary classrooms and toilets have been ordered by around 29 schools to avoid children forced into lockdown-style remote learning.
Grilled on the crisis, Ms Keegan told the Commons: “I have been to a number of these schools and seen children and met children in the portacabins.
“And in fact at the first school I went to the children were all petitioning me to stay in the portacabins because they actually preferred it to the classroom.”
READ MORE ON POLITICS
Labour’s shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson blasted: “Nothing better sums up thirteen years of Conservative underinvestment in our schools than the Education Secretary’s pride at children begging to learn in portacabins rather than stay in crumbling classrooms.”
The remarks came a week after she was caught on hot mic insisting she had done a “f***ing good job” handling the Raac chaos while others sat “on their backsides”.
Officials yesterday could not tell exasperated MPs how many of the 248 mobile classrooms had actually been delivered.
In another awkward moment Ms Keegan was revealed to have jetted on summer holiday after being told about the growing concrete crisis in schools.
Most read in The Sun
MPs on the education select committee were told yesterday that she was alerted to the problem on August 21, after which she headed to Spain.
Ms Keegan said yesterday: “In terms of my own decision, I went abroad because that was the first time I could go abroad. I went abroad for my father’s birthday knowing that I would still be chairing the meetings”.
Going on the offensive, she said that three schools built under Labour’s flagship repair scheme were now suffering with Raac.