Parent seriously injured after large piece of cladding flies off school in Sheffield

Carla, whose surname was kept anonymous, was dropping her children off at Dore Primary School when a large piece of cladding flew off the side of the building and struck her on the head. She was off work for three weeks.

“It is horrifying that we’ve got to this point,” she said. “Our children’s school buildings are literally falling apart and it feels like it is only a matter of time before something even more serious happens.

“My injuries are bad enough but the fact that this could so easily have been a child doesn’t bear thinking about.

“I know the school is doing everything it can, but I also know that they don’t have the funds. It feels like this is a warning sign for the government and I really hope it isn’t ignored.”

It comes as the school is set to lose £97,496 in cuts in the coming financial year.

Ms Blake asked the secretary of state for schools to contact the headteacher as a matter of urgency to discuss what can be done to support them with repairs.

She said: “It is a complete dereliction of duty. Thirteen years of reckless Conservative cuts to school’s capital spending budgets have left us in this situation. And warning sign after warning sign from teachers and Department for Education officials have been ignored. Now my constituent is paying the price. Ministers need to take urgent action to address this crisis before anyone else is harmed.”

Lynnette Glossop, headteacher at the school, said staff took immediate remedial steps to avoid further incidents, with help from the council’s health and safety team.

She added: “We are grateful to the parent who contacted Olivia Blake about the condition of the school building and hope that it brings about improvements to the way in which schools are funded in relation to buildings repairs.”

Between 2010 and today, capital spending on schools has halved. In Sheffield, 153 of 163 schools face cuts in the coming financial year and are set to collectively lose around £7.7 million.

Last spring correspondence between the Department for Education (DfE) and the Treasury was leaked showing the DfE raising alarm on the state of many school buildings being a “risk to life”.

In its annual report, published in December, the DfE reiterated this, saying “there is a risk of collapse of one or more blocks in some schools which are at, or approaching, the end of their designed life-expectancy, and structural integrity is impaired”. DfE officials also raised the risk level of building collapsing from “critical” to “critical – very likely”.

Following this the government announced that £1 billion would be invested in the rebuilding of 61 schools but Ms Blake said this was a “drop in the ocean” compared to what was lost.

In response to Ms Blake in the House of Commons yesterday, Nick Gibb, minister of state for schools, said: “I am very happy to meet with the honourable lady to discuss this.

“The ratings in which she refers to reflects increased numbers of structural issues identified through our continued monitoring and surveying of the schools estate and the age of that estate.

“We can and do improve the life of school buildings by careful maintenance and upgrades over time and that is why we have a 10 year rebuilding programme and why we allocate significant capital funding each year. And we provide extensive guidance on effective estate management.”