As most of you will have read through today’s ParentMail, there was an incident at the school on the 21st Feb 2018 where a ceiling tile fell from the school’s General Purpose room upstairs while children from the After School Club were in the room. The ceiling tile did strike a child as it fell, but thankfully no harm came to the child, and the parent was contacted to inform them of the incident. Upon the children exiting the room, a section of the frame of the suspended ceiling also dropped along with further tiles. Clearly a concerning incident for all.
Since being made aware of the incident, I have been in touch with the school and the local councillors to ask that the City of Edinburgh Council and Amey provide a detailed response of the cause of the issue, the actions being taken to resolve, and details of any subsequent inspection that gives assurances that the remainder of the school ceiling does not have any similar issues. I continue to push for details of this to be published to parents.
The area in the General Purpose room that had the issue was rectified and fixed by midday today (22 Feb 2018). I have been told that the inspection of the remainder of the ceiling areas in the school was due to complete by the end of the day today (22 Feb 2018). This inspection was being completed by both Amey and also inspectors from the City of Edinburgh Council.
Clearly in light of this incident along with the wall collapse a few years ago, I’ve already had concerns raised from parents who rightly seek further reassurance around the construction & quality of the school building. I will be raising this issue again with the City of Edinburgh Council pointing out that there has been further parental concern, and requesting what further steps can be taken to give reassurance of the safety of the whole of the building.
For those interested, the following image gives a rough idea of what the issue presumably was. This is a stock image and not a picture of Oxgangs Primary – the construction may be different so this is just to give some context. The hangers from the ceiling are attached to the suspended ceiling frame as below (there are no ceiling tiles in this picture but they would be resting on the square sections). What has occurred at Oxgangs is that some of these hangers appeared to be missing and therefore this has presumably caused the suspended ceiling frame to eventually drop as happened yesterday.
The next Parent Council meeting is on the Tuesday 6th March 2018, and I will set an agenda item should there need to be further discussion on this issue.
In the meantime, if you have any immediate concerns on the welfare of your children or regarding the incident, you should direct these questions to the school either by phone or by email at admin@oxgangs.edin.sch.uk.
I am happy to capture any other parental concerns through the Parent Council by emailing oxgangspc@gmail.com or through the contact form on this page.
Richard Imlach
Chair – Oxgangs Parent Community Council
There has been some press interest from the Sunday Post in the last few days around the fire safety of PFI schools. The ex-chair of the Oxgangs PCC, Crerar Christie, was heavily involved in understanding the detail of the Cole Report around the whole wall collapse & PFI issues. As such, it was prudent to seek his comments & inputs on the nature of the questions from the press. His comments are as below. If any parents have any further concerns, either from the below, or subsequent to this, please do get in contact so we can look to get any further information.