Many school buildings have not had adequate safety checks and undetected defects are inevitable, according to the architect behind a report into last year’s school-closures fiasco in Edinburgh.

The situation has left the general secretary of a headteachers’ organisation feeling “really quite scared”, as there is no practical way of finding out how many dangers exist in schools after they have been built.

Professor John Cole published his independent report earlier this year after the collapse of a wall at Oxgangs Primary in January 2016, which found that deaths had only been avoided thanks to luck and timing.

Last week, he told the Scottish Parliament’s Education and Skills Committee that it was “impossible” to tell how many faults lay undiscovered in Scotland’s school buildings; without the rigorous checks recommended in his report, there was “always a risk” of defects that could result in a repeat of the Oxgangs fall, as well as the four others like it in Scottish schools in recent years.

“I’m sure that there are many buildings that haven’t been checked,” he said. “It can happen again, but I don’t know the frequency with which it will happen.”

Professor Cole also suggested that a number of school walls may have collapsed without many people knowing. “Not everyone reports falls, because people don’t want the bad publicity and the company will tidy it up quickly,” he said.

Speaking on the day of the Grenfell Tower disaster in London, he added that structurally unsound walls were not the only concern, as “there’s a huge question around [issues such as] whether the roof is secure enough to stay on” and whether fire-break procedures are “sufficient enough to stop fire within a school”.

He stressed that “it’s the whole system that is at fault”, from the “clients”, such as local authorities, to the companies that make special ties to hold walls together.

Jim Thewliss, general secretary of School Leaders Scotland, told the committee: “Having read Professor Cole’s report, I have to say I felt really quite scared by what is happening there, because headteachers take over school buildings on the basis of trust that they are fit for purpose.”

He added: “There’s an expectation from parents, there’s an expectation from society, that young people, when they are sent to school, will be educated in a safe environment.”

However, in light of Professor Cole’s findings and a series of submissions to the committee from local authorities, he said “there is nothing there to give me confidence, [on] a great many occasions”.

A Scottish government spokesman said: “The safety of people in public buildings is an absolute priority.”

Following the Cole Report, “robust guidance has been provided to public sector bodies, to be reflected in their asset inspection and management strategies”. Local government minister Kevin Stewart last week met local authority representatives “to gain assurances that council areas have given due consideration to the findings of this inquiry and have undertaken appropriate [quality] assurance work on their estates”.

A spokesman for local authorities body Cosla said: “Scotland’s councils are fully committed to making all of their buildings as safe as possible. They also take their duty of care to the people within these building very seriously.”

All 17 Edinburgh schools that had to close last year - some for the entire Easter-tosummer term - were built via public-private partnerships. The Cole Report found that this funding arrangement “was not responsible for the defective construction”, but did increase the risk of poor-quality design and construction.