Councillors are set to mount a review of Newcastle’s schools, following controversy over a prolonged closure that hit more than 2,000 youngsters last year.

Families were left hugely frustrated last October and November by the closure of Jesmond Park Academy, after a section of steelwork collapsed from a walkway and sparked fears of a “catastrophic” repeat incident while children were in school.

City leaders are now planning to launch a probe into the dangers of similar problems elsewhere in Newcastle and concerns over a lack of accountability at schools that are now run by academy trusts rather than local authorities.

A motion passed by Newcastle City Council last week warns that the Jesmond Park Academy situation “raises questions about building resilience and building lifespan” at schools built under Private Finance Initiative (PFI) deals in the 2000s, with many PFI contracts due to expire by 2030.

Lib Dem councillor Greg Stone warned that Newcastle had a “big problem” on the horizon when those schools built or rebuilt under PFI are in need of replacement and that it was unclear at this stage what preparations are being made for that.

Coun Stone said there had been a “dramatic breakdown” in communications between parents and the school during the uncertainty surrounding Jesmond Park Academy’s closure, while opposition colleague Christine Morrissey complained that the academisation of schools had led to “major problems with fragmentation, inconsistency, and a lack of transparency” in the education system.

The council resolved to undertake “robust” talks with academy trusts and PFI companies in the city on their ability to maintain school buildings and for the authority’s overview and scrutiny committee to conduct a “deep dive” into every unplanned school closure of more than five days in the past five years.

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City council Labour leader Nick Kemp said: “The issue is about accountability. It is clear that there are many, many lessons to be learned from the experience with Jesmond Park Academy… it will vary from academy to academy. What we need to look at and learn the lessons from are to empower our local ward councillors to be able to hold the academies to account, to challenge and question where at all appropriate. 

“And if it is the case that the academies themselves are closed and don’t wish to engage, then we will use our public forums like overview and scrutiny to do that in a public way and produce reports that can act as some weight to challenge the governance.

“Realistically, there [needs to be] an exercise to review the whole of the school estate and public buildings across Newcastle. There are other buildings built under different funding regimes and what we need to understand is the implications for us as a city currently, for our children, and the future children of our city.”

Labour councillor Lesley Storey, the council’s cabinet member responsible for education, said that politicians “should all be concerned” about the impact of PFI contracts expirin