All 17 schools in the Edinburgh schools crisis have shown faults and were not inspected by the city council before they were deemed safe, it has been revealed.
Andrew Burns, the leader of Edinburgh City Council, said the consortium that built the schools self-certified that they met "all the relevant building standards".
Some of the schools closed amid safety fears could be affected in the "longer term", Mr Burns warned.
The consortium, Edinburgh Schools Partnership, said it would accept full financial responsibility for the crisis.
READ MORE: Edinburgh Council warns some schools face 'longer term' repairs
The majority of the 2,000 pupils preparing for exams at the five high schools involved resumed lessons on Wednesday.
In total 5,900 primary and secondary pupils have confirmed arrangements in place out of 7,600.
Senior pupils from three secondaries were able to return to their usual building as they only had partial refurbishments as part of the Public Private Partnership project (PPP) delivered by the Edinburgh Schools Partnership, while S4-S6 pupils at two other high schools are having classes in alternative buildings but are taught by their own teachers.
Practical exams due to take place at the five high schools have also been postponed.
READ MORE: Council to pay back £540m for schools in Edinburgh PPP fiasco
As S3 pupils returned to classes at three of the high schools, Mr Burns insisted that the local authority had "undertaken all its legal responsibilities".
Mr Burns said that the council received early indications that suggest evidence of faults across all 17 affected schools to a varying extent".
"At the moment it is too early to say what the impact will be as full survey results from Edinburgh Schools Partnership have not been yet been received.
"Some faults may be easy to fix and may not present a major problem while others could be longer term.
“We will provide parents with further information on the impact of individual school surveys once the full reports are received and assessed.
Gavin Corbett, Edinburgh's Green education spokesman, said the scale of the "problems and the consequences vary school to school".
READ MORE: Edinburgh Council warns some schools face 'longer term' repairs
He added: "For those schools facing the longest timescale for work, absolute priority must be given to all young people getting other classroom space in other schools or in other appropriate buildings.
"While a few days out of school is recoverable, it's just not acceptable for that to stretch into weeks."
The schools were all built or refurbished under the same PPP scheme around 10 years ago.
Mr Burns, pictured below, said the schools would have been inspected on an "ongoing basis", but said it was only when more thorough checks were carried out that the faults emerged.
But he insisted that the council "will be making sure whoever is responsible for this is held to account".
He said: "It's only since we've done the intrusive inspections on the evidence we got last Friday that the latest problems have been discovered.
"If they had been handed to us properly with all the building standards complied too, these problems would not have been in existence, that's where the problem arose."
An Edinburgh Schools Partnership spokesman said: "Although survey work is ongoing, early indications suggest that there are no issues relating to header ties within a number of the schools.
"However, full reports have not yet been received so we are not in a position to confirm any other details at this stage.”
READ MORE: Edinburgh Council warns some schools face 'longer term' repairs
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