More funding for the education sector?

[chopc]

The government has magicked up / created money to pay people's wages/ support businesses etc - surely it can do the same for the education sector so that it can invest more money in day portacabins and the like to get students back to school?

[ohthegoats]

There aren't enough porta cabins in the country.

They'll just put the SD down to 1m and be done with.

[StaffAssociationRepresentative]

Schools, also by magic, have to fund extra cleaning, hand gel from existing budget. State education is woefully underfunded and has been for decades

[chopc]

@StaffAssociationRepresentative no they wouldn't my question is that's the government can give them the money they have magicked up just like they did for businesses, charities etc

[WhenSheWasBad]

There aren't enough porta cabins in the country

This. I don’t know what the solution is. Education definitely needs more investment. But throwing money at the problem won’t magic up 100s of thousands of porta cabins and the staff to teach in them by September.

It’s an awful situation for everyone.

[EmperorCovidula]

They haven’t magicked it up. They’re borrowing it.

[Barbie222]

I think it's comparatively cheap to repurpose two or three existing large scale buildings. The problem with "just put in a few portacabins" are the sheer numbers involved - we couldn't manufacture enough by September. The cost too.

I think though at 1m a lot of people are going to be disappointed - 1m is what I am currently offering with 15 in a class. The bubble size is the limiting factor. I think we will be looking at class sizes of 15 until social distancing is formally scrapped. If this is a year or 18 months away, I can see how a government would be reluctant to fund expensive short term strategies like portacabins. Not sure what the answer is. Existing community buildings could work for some schools but not all.

[Duckfinger]

We don't want more money ( well other than what we always need).
What we want is to scrap social distancing in school and get classes back to 30 sowe can get on with sorting out the mess that's been created over the last few months.
The stats just don't justify this level of disruption.
Over 90% of children in relevant year groups have returned so clearly the parents at our school feel the same as us. Our head made it clear in the letter we would not be social distancing within our bubbles.

[ineedaholidaynow]

We needed more funding before this. Currently looking at next year’s budgets and we are going to have to cut teachers and mix year groups. Terribly sad. If social distancing is going to continue into September that is going to be even harder with a reduced staff.

[Barbie222]

Over 90% of children in relevant year groups have returned

The national figure is 50%. I have a third of my class back. If parents are keen about a wider school return perhaps we need to do some reaching out to reluctant parents so that the poll stats change first. It's very frustrating.

[ohthegoats]

It's not a Nightingale situation. Even taking the premises bit out of it (with secondary specialist classrooms not even considered), we're in trouble.

If you actually look at what various suggestions have been, even from politicians (Layla Moran for example), what they are suggesting is that parents would hand their children over to a stranger at an empty Serco office/town hall etc. Just can't see that happening.

[toomanypillows]

@Duckfinger out of 156 eligible students in my school, only 2 are returning tomorrow, so not everyone wants it.

We won't have any problem with distancing, though 😂

[ohthegoats]

Over 90% of children in relevant year groups have returned

No they haven't. It's between 30 and 50%. In my school there are only 16 out of a year group of 48 in current year 6 bubbles. More said they'd be coming, but they haven't. This has meant that our bubbles were made with the 'more' in mind, so we are now out of staff to be able to open more bubbles.

[CuriousaboutSamphire]

Even if you could magic up the portacabins you'd need old soaks like me to come out of retirement too.

There simply aren't enough trained teachers. TAs are already over utilised.

If you ever doubted what many teachers have been shouting, striking and pleading for, this should show you very clearly.

There are not enough good, qualified teachers and conditions do not make teaching a good long term prospect for many - no matter how you viewed it before this should make you rethink!

[CuriousaboutSamphire]

Oh... No. I am not saying teachers have it worse than any other equally strained profession.

But I was a teacher, I was not any other profession, so I speak from my experience.

[Duckfinger]

@Barbie222

Over 90% of children in relevant year groups have returned

The national figure is 50%. I have a third of my class back. If parents are keen about a wider school return perhaps we need to do some reaching out to reluctant parents so that the poll stats change first. It's very frustrating.

That's a shame.

We are a village school and there have only been a handful of cases in the village and no deaths. I would imagine this is the main reason for our high numbers. Also as we are around 20 minutes from 2 hospitals we have a lot of NHS children so have had around 40 in each day throughout.
The NHS staff are keen to tell us that the hospitals (which serve cities) are now only having 1 or 2 cases a week, as a result the general feeling in the village is that the threat is all but gone.

[ohthegoats]

I don't think there is any doubt that education needs more money in general. Particularly for SEND children, both in specialist provision and in mainstream. Mental health is a significant challenge, and has been for years. It's going to be much worse after this too. So, CAMHS funding too please.

[Duckfinger]

@ohthegoats

Over 90% of children in relevant year groups have returned

No they haven't. It's between 30 and 50%. In my school there are only 16 out of a year group of 48 in current year 6 bubbles. More said they'd be coming, but they haven't. This has meant that our bubbles were made with the 'more' in mind, so we are now out of staff to be able to open more bubbles.

In the school I work in yes they have.and I was clearly talking about our school and our parents.

[ohthegoats]

the general feeling in the village is that the threat is all but gone

Which is also a problem. But not relevant to this thread.

[ohthegoats]

was clearly talking about our school and our parents

Also irrelevant to this thread. If you're going to throw numbers around as a discussion point, then make them national, because the thread is about national responses.

[ineedaholidaynow]

In DS’s private school they certainly haven’t had 90% pupils return, in fact one eligible year group had 0% wanting to return, and this is with parents having to still pay nearly 100% fees.

[Uhoh2020]

@Duckfinger are you a teacher/headteacher? Do schools need to keep provisions in place for the whole class or just the ones that have said they are returning? Out of the 30 children in my ds reception class only 6 said they were returning. They have decided not to have the reception year back in, I'm wondering if its because they would in effect have 24 empty spaces that could accommodate other children

[Barbie222]

I think until Gavins announcement this week, only the eligible year groups could return, so space in their bubble needed to be prioritised over children in other year groups who wanted to return.

[NotAnotherUserNumber]

There are around 32,800 schools in the UK. Let’s assume each school needs around 6 new classrooms (which is probably a huge underestimate to get all children back in cohort classrooms). So that is around 200,000 classrooms needed.

Let’s ignore the fact that there aren’t 200,000 modular classrooms/portacabins available and there aren’t the millions of builders required to assemble all of these and just consider the cost of the buildings themselves. According to google, modular classrooms cost around £85k to £100k (www.pfmodular.co.uk/modular-classroom-cost-uk/ ) So the total cost would be around 20 billion pounds.

This of course ignores the fact that many schools don’t have the land space for these new classrooms and the logistics of building this many at once are literally impossible.

[ineedaholidaynow]

Does anyone know when the announcement is going to be made in respect of the massive catch up plan the Government are introducing? Hopefully there will be additional funding for that.

[Piggywaspushed]

Peering hard at your last sentence to try to ascertain if it's irony ineed!

Can I echo please what Barbie said : getting rid of SD or reducing it to 1 m (which is more likely to happen) is only a partial solution. If removed altogether , there will be absences , particularly of adult staff, and that will have knock on effects. Why have we got ourselves into a position in our country where this situation is so hard to resolve because we have the largest primary class sizes in the developed world? (equal with France, I believe) . A permanent cap on class size would be one lovely long term outcome of this we would all like to see not going to happen

If SD is reduced to 1m, much more likely , you are still looking at reduced class sizes and extra staff and space requirements.