The government prioritised its free schools programme over children’s safety, former DfE permanent secretary suggests

The government prioritised its free school policy over ensuring children’s safety by investing as it had been advised to do in a school rebuilding programme, a former Department for Education Permanent Secretary said this morning.

In an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, with the state of school buildings dominating the news agenda, Jonathan Slater suggested that addressing the need to restore the in many cases crumbling school estate had come second, in the government’s priorities, to building more free schools. This was despite the condition of schools posing a “critical risk to life,” he stated.

Furthermore, after Mr Slater had left as Permanent Secretary, in 2020, the Treasury under Rishi Sunak as Chancellor had responded to a request from the DfE to double the scale of the school rebuilding by halving it, the former official said.

Mr Slater was DfE Permanent Secretary from May 2016 to August 2020. He had been asked about the current crisis, which has seen more than 100 schools having to shut because of concerns over the use of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac) from the 1950s to 1990s, by Today presenter Nick Robinson.

Mr Slater presented his account of events of recent years in roughly chronological order.