THE UK's Education Secretary has been recorded making an explicit rant following an ITV interview about concrete risks in schools.
It comes as Rishi Sunak acknowledged that hundreds more schools in England could be affected by crumbling concrete as he faced accusations he failed to fund a programme to replace ageing classrooms across England.
Speaking to ITV, Gillian Keegan blamed local authorities for their maintenance and claimed the UK Government is taking a “really super cautious” route in identifying those at risk.
Education Secretary Gillian Keegan is upset nobody is giving her praise for DOING HER JOB while others "sit on their arses" doing nothing about the collapse-prone RAAC concrete in schools. pic.twitter.com/QmPIkydgUg
— PoliticsJOE (@PoliticsJOE_UK) September 4, 2023
Following the end of her interview, she was caught on camera saying: “Does anyone ever say you know what you’ve done a f*****g good job because everyone else is sat on their a**se and done nothing.
“No signs of that.”
The reaction prompted a response from many people on X, formerly known as Twitter, with former spin doctor Alastair Campbell saying: “Mmmm. All a bit Thick of It methinks…”
“A hell of a quote this”, said another user while a third joked that Keegan clearly felt she was being “underappreciated”.
Someone else added: “If you do any TV interviews, the mic and camera is ALWAYS on… even when the interview is over.
“You’d think she’d have known this.”
Pupils in England are facing being taught in temporary classrooms, on different sites or even forced into pandemic-style remote lessons.
More than a hundred schools were told they could not fully open just days before the start of autumn term because of safety fears over the use of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete.
Sunak said: “New information came to light recently and it’s important that once it had, that the Government acted on it as swiftly as possible.
“Of course I know the timing is frustrating, but I want to give people a sense of the scale of what we are grappling with here – there are around 22,000 schools in England and the important thing to know is that we expect 95% of those schools won’t be impacted by this.”
Should 5% be affected, this would mean 1100 schools would be impacted.
