Schools facing catastrophic winter

[noblegiraffe]

Schools are starting their Autumn term facing an unprecedented funding crisis. Headteachers are becoming increasingly frantic in their disbelief that the government has done fuck all about it, and appears to be planning to continue to do fuck all about it.

There are few issues contributing -

The energy crisis - school energy bills are not capped, unlike household ones. To give an idea of the scale of the issue, Ormiston Academies Trust which sponsors 43 schools will see its energy bills rise from £5.1 million to £14.3 million. Grant Shapps, transport minister, says that schools could consider switching to LED lightbulbs.

Teacher and support staff payrises - the government have recommended payrises for teachers and support staff, but crucially will not be giving schools extra money to fund them. If schools give staff the recommended pay rise, they will have to cut services to fund this (even before you consider the energy bills)

The cost of living crisis - schools are facing increased prices just as households are. Food for the canteen, stationery orders, everything is more expensive. Sam Freedman tweets "Very rough calculation is that energy bills plus teacher pay increase plus higher food costs are going to add around £5bn to school budgets nationally. Just under 10% of the total budget. And none of it was built into the funding model."

On top of that, covid still needs to be considered. Last Jan/Feb schools were in chaos due to staff absences (the government widely trumpeted their call for an army of volunteers to step in, which didn't appear). At the end of the summer term, all the education unions wrote to James Cleverly, temp Ed Sec asking for a covid plan that included increased funding to schools for supply teachers to cover staff absence. Given that we haven't actually got a functioning government at the moment, I'm pretty sure he hasn't replied. Signs are that we're facing a bad flu season too, vaccinating school staff should be a consideration. Some schools already pay for the flu jab for staff, most won't be eligible for a covid booster, no idea what the impact of that will be. Obviously there will be pressure to close windows to keep any heat in, which goes against covid guidance for ventilation.

Some academy trusts appear to have large reserves which will help them weather the storm, most very much don't. twitter.com/ajjolley/status/1564562763443277825?s=21&t=nmM2Q_vFCmo5GzILNNKhfg

School leaders are reporting that they will have to make support staff and/or teachers redundant or pause recruitment, restrict heating, cancel school trips and extra curricular activities. This will inevitably have an impact on children, and on the quality of education on offer.

I'm not sure what either Truss or Sunak have said about the crisis facing education, all I've heard is wittering about grammar schools. An intervention is needed urgently.

www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/energy-bills-cost-of-living-crisis-schools-face-catastrophic-winter

Yes I agree @BlueRidge i would be a shit parent if I stood by and let my children freeze at school.

I also feel awful for the teachers, they’ve already endured 2 winters teaching in their coats because the doors needed to be kept open. But at least they had heating.

Our school already has and deficit, we receive some of the lowest levels of funding in the country and we’ve always struggled. There’s no way our school can remain open 5 days a week unless something drastic happens, we simply don’t have the money to pay the bills

Our school has been collecting cash donations from parents for about 2 years. Which has kept the wolf from the door. We do have some well paid parents who’ve donated £100s or £1000 to keep our state school in southern England going - mainly to fund provision for SEN children.

I feel so sad about this situation and feel awful for the SLT - wtf are they supposed to do??!

We had part 1 of 'What we need to do to save money' today, it was the soft version.
We will have part 2 tomorrow, no doubt with we are not looking at making redundancies but etc.

That’s true. But they don’t think anything through, so no surprise.

Just informal mutterings at the moment but it seems part of the solution may be to reduce any time teachers have at the end of the day to stay and get things done. It's going to mean teachers leaving earlier but having to take more work home with them. Nightmare for those with young children or those who need that silent, work-style environment to get things done.

46000 left, that's crazy - but just on my small circle of friends I know 2 primary teachers in their early 40s who've got no intention of ever going back to teaching @Iamnotthe1

Our maths department and a few of our science teachers are now from S or SE Asia. They’re good at their subjects but have no prior experience of UK system and some are struggling to teach and maintain discipline in their second language. We did have quite a few Canadian English teachers, but they’ve all left, cost of living too high.

That's one of the most loveliest things I ever read.

This isn’t fair either because you are having to use your own electricity…

They give with one hand and take with the other. Enough is enough… teachers really do get a shitty deal at the moment. And students. In fact anyone who isn’t a Tory and earning loads is being shafted.

I couldn’t be a teacher! You all deserve much, much better!

What angers me the most is instead of admitting things like they spent £37m on a failed T and T, lost £11m sue to not protecting loans etc they keep on the rhetoric about "world leading" over anything covid related and then keep saying there's no money to do x
y and z.

But also keep saying they've funded schools more since 2010.

It's the blatant lies and underfunding. There isn't even any attempt or will to fund education better.

They just say teachers aren't doing enough. Blame them. And ignore the consequence of this which is the fact they don't have enough - they can't recruit or retrain.

I am a qualified teacher with 15 years plus experience. I left teaching in 2017 and would rather stack shelves in Tesco than return to the classroom! So glad to be out of it all!

And that's only the figures for teachers who joined the profession in the last 5 years. The actual number including everyone leaving the profession in that time will be way, way higher.

Another ex teacher here. It’s incredibly stressful and hard job. Absolutely not worth the money. I’m happily out of it.
Until they get a grip on ofsted, league tables and the a minority of bullying parents it won’t change.

PS by bullying parents I don’t mean parents who want the best for their kids and politely come and advocate for them. I mean parents who slash your tyres (yes really).

I wonder how much that would save? Our heating already goes off at lunchtime so sending teaches home straight after school wouldn’t save much. I suppose you could turn the lights off, but our cleaners are all still there from 3.30-5 so need electricity.

My friend got threatened with a baseball bat by one delightful dad. Constant parents swearing at her.

They should survey teachers who got out before retirement age to give the top 5 changes that would make them come back, the lack of experienced teachers is a real shocker.

So who is organising the protest/ marches to demand increased funding for schools then?

They should survey teachers who got out before retirement age to give the top 5 changes that would make them come back, the lack of experienced teachers is a real shocker

I bet pointless workload and Ofsted would appear repeatedly!

Based on the reasons people I know have left, the 5 would be (not in order):

• declining behaviour and ineffective responses to behaviour,
• unrealistic and sometimes pointless workload,
• OFSTED and how unfit it is for purpose,
• lacking the resources to be able to do the job as effectively as possible and fed up of that,
• 12 years which have collectively resulted in a significant real terms pay cut.

Absolutely.

But then they'd have to address it rather than blame the teachers.

For a first world apparently rich country we don't spend nearly enough in this country on basics such as healthcare, education and emergency services.

We'd rather pay the money to private companies and then reduce their taxes to keep them sweet.

Absolutely! Currently trying to plan my exit strategy as I will have two under three when I return after may leave and no longer wish to work all evening and a whole day per weekend! I’d like to see my own children. For me and people that I have known to leave the profession recently, your reasons are spot on. For me personally, the order that is affecting how how feel is:

1. workload
2. lack of resources
3. Declining behaviour (and parental response)
4. ofsted
5. pay

But sadly, schools can't afford experienced teachers anyway. Again the quality of education and the quality of leadership suffers.

You can really see it ida, experienced people add so much to any job, and I'm not surprised to see a lot of agreement from teachers on what the issues are.

Behaviour
Workload- expecting us to do more and more in less time
Disillusionment. Nothing works. Everything comes round again, repackaged, but doesn't ever make any difference. Sick of hearing 'high quality' and'effective'. I've known shit teachers get great results and vice versa. So much is the luck of the draw. Fix society, so we get kids who are able to learn and can have the luxury of focusing on school.

And I'm tired. So, so tired and burnt out. Which is bloody annoying, cos I got through the really hard years (small kids and full time) and should be in a good position now. Oh well. Only 18 years left.

I think everyone is still the 'surely the government will do something and the only reason that they haven't is because they're waiting for Liz Truss to do it' phase.

If she doesn't do anything to reduce energy bills to a manageable amount then it'll be more than schools they'll be taking to the streets about.

Let's hope she's competent.

Let's hope she's competent.

That would be such a funny comment, if it wasn't so serious.☹️

I know. I deleted a mocking emoji because I suddenly realised 'fuck me, I hope she is competent'.