THE UK’s biggest trade union ramped up its call to end the use of private finance for schools in Scotland yesterday after safety issues emerged over at least 71 more sites.

A BBC investigation revealed a new list of facilities with defects similar to those affecting Edinburgh schools which had to be closed over safety fears.

Classes were halted at as many as 17 sites across the city last year in the wake of a wall collapse at Oxgangs Primary amid high winds.

All affected schools were built or refurbished as part of the same public-private partnership (PPP) scheme. Their operator, Edinburgh Schools Partnership (ESP), said it was unable to provide safety assurances for the properties.

Education Secretary John Swinney said that the schools involved in the BBC investigation were built more than ten years ago when Labour were in power, and that construction methods changed when the SNP took over at Holyrood in 2007.

Yesterday, the BBC published details of similar problems at 71 other educational establishments in 15 council areas. This includes 22 in Glasgow as well as five in Argyll and Bute and four in East Lothian.

The broadcaster asked every local authority whether repair work on “significant structural issues” or wall ties had been done at PPP schools, or at others built under schemes such as non-profit distributing (NPD), or “design and build”, in the past year and a half.

Repairs have been carried out on most of the buildings, however, work is still to be completed on six of them and some authorities failed to answer.

Unite deputy Scottish secretary Mary Alexander said councils had been “forced at gunpoint to use private finance”, adding: “That’s a central government policy that is still continuing, so we now need the Scottish Government to stand up and take responsibility.

“Private finance has given us poor quality, unsafe buildings at extortionate cost, putting massive debt around the necks of councils, health boards and other public bodies, and dragging them under at a time of austerity. The use of private finance models should be scrapped now.”

Calling for a national inquiry into the safety of all public buildings constructed under private finance schemes, including the Scottish Government’s NPD model, she said: “NPD is basically PFI-light. We want an inquiry to take an independent look at all these contracts and where it’s shown that private finance schemes are not delivering value for money, the Scottish Government should enable public bodies to buy them out.”

An independent report into the Edinburgh schools closures led by Professor John Cole concluded that it was down to timing and luck that no deaths or injuries occurred in the incident at Oxgangs Primary.

Approximately nine tons of masonry fell on an area where children could easily have been standing or passing through.

Ian Honeyman of the Scottish Building Federation agreed that there were “big implications” for the building industry.

He said: “People have to have confidence in the buildings that are being produced, and also be confident that people are safe when they’re living or working in them.”

However, one parent of a primary school pupil in Glasgow told The National the latest revelations were “unsettling”, despite assurances that steps had been taken.

The father, who did not want to be named, said: “The idea of sending your child to a school that is unsafe is horrifying. You worry so much about your child and you think of school as being a safe place, or at least you don’t think of walls potentially falling down around them.”

Speaking on Good Morning Scotland, Swinney insisted improvements had been made, saying: “These schools were built under a brick-and-block system. We now use a steel-framing system, which is much more individually configured to individual schools.

“The Edinburgh example –where 17 schools were taken forward as a batch purchase by the City of Edinburgh Council – no longer happens.

“We now do individual design, based on the steel-framing system, to customise schools for the needs of individual localities and to give us much greater control over that construction process.”

The Scottish Futures Trust, which oversees PPP and NPD contracts, said it had contacted public bodies and councils in light of the Cole report, which recommended intrusive surveys as “the most reliable way of identifying similar issues which are not always clear from visual inspection alone”.

However, the BBC found this work has not yet been carried out in all areas, with Dumfries and Galloway, Orkney, East Ayrshire and Perth & Kinross amongst the local authorities yet to have the checks carried out.

Officials in Dumfries and Galloway said tests will be done this month, while in North Lanarkshire only visual inspections were carried out.

A spokesperson for Glasgow City Council said: “All the schools surveyed by the independent structural engineer were declared safe to occupy and the additional remedial work carried out as a precaution.”