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

Was this twenty years ago? Or in Britain?
Due to safeguarding this is no longer possible in most schools. My kids secondary there is one reception door and some fire doors, that is it. It is physically not possible for multiple doors to be left open.

I wrote to my (tory) MP and to the DfE

I eventually got responses back pointing to all the cash the government has put into schools - ie the funding that was announced ages ago, needed to reverse the previous years of underfunding and based on funding assumptions that are nothing like what we are currently facing.

It is ridiculous. There is no support or guidance just references to procurement frameworks - which always seem to have higher prices!!

Are some people just stupid? Of course schools need to be able to heat the building. I doubt many people would be happy to work or study in a freezing cold building in winter. I know that my dd would suffer.

Ah, but teaching is a vocation, they get all those holidays and most of them are shit anyway, so you can treat them anyway you want.

We are supposed to be happy to send off five-year-olds to an unheated school day after day.
Is the House of Commons still going to be heated? Maybe MPs could wear their coats on indoors and carry hot water bottles instead?

And they could have cheese sandwiches and an apple for lunch, instead of subsidised steak and booze!

Not RTFT yet but what would actually happen if a school runs out of money? A school can't go bust surely?

Im in Scotland and I get the impression that all finances & budgets are managed through the council rather than down to individual head teachers - am I very wrong in this?

Yep and doesn’t take a genius to guess who they vote for. They probably get very annoyed at the common oiks daring to complain!

From memory, if a school goes "bust" they are (were) taken over by the LA, would would send someone in to cut down the workforce and anything they deem to be unnessercary. until the school comes in on budget.

Hospitals, yes.

I have never set foot in a school that is warm in the winter. The heating in my school goes off at 12.30 and classrooms were barely above 10 degrees last winter. It'll probably go off even earlier this year.

So hospitals are going to have ill elderly people cold all because healthy visitors wearing coats find the wards too warm?
I have been ill and on wards and it is not too hot when you are really ill.

Oh goodness. What have we become. Hospitals need to be heated as the patients are ill and immobile.

Schools need to be heated, maybe to a lower temp than a hospitals but at least comfortably enough for learning to take place.

Quite a few people missing the point I think. I hope the Gov does do something because we seem to be walking into another disaster

To be clear, I was agreeing that hospitals are like saunas, not that they could/should turn the temperature down (they are unbearably hot to me either as a visitor or a patient, but I'm not 90).

For all those commenting on what I said, I'm in NI. I've worked in 2 schools. My son and different family members have attended 5 different schools across the country. They are over heated here greatly. Heating has never been turned off in the middle of the day ever. It runs from September to April at the same setting from early morning to five in the evening. I've asked about this as my son has a condition were central heating makes it worse. Hospitals are the same, they are like sweat rooms, vastly over heated and breeding grounds for mrsa, covid etc. It won't do any harm at all having the temperature down and off altogether with fresh air being allowed to circulate even in winter.

I've just said similar on another thread. This is hugely worrying and as educating children benefits society as a whole, whether or not your own child is affected, is extremely important. We must fight to protect schools and their staff, there are no extras and schools are already running as tight as they can. If school staff are lost as a result of energy prices we as a society have failed our children.

@Tootsey11 Maybe things are different in NI? It is not like this in England or Scotland.

Our school are ready struggling to recruit now, we aren’t getting applications for advertised jobs, when we do recruit we’ve had people pull out after accepting a job, which was unheard of a few years ago. We’re a great school but just outside of London weighting and without a 6th form which doesn’t help.

Those asking about funding, LEA schools can go into deficit but must have a plan to return to black within 3 years. Academies are not allowed to run a deficit and should always have reserves - like charities.

Our EP service has already been cut due to number of EHCP that need to be written and our access to S&L therapy significantly restricted. Which creates a vicious cycle as only way to access services is via EHCP..

I am still hoping the government follow the lead of the EU and look to reduce the costs for everyone by reforming the energy market. Otherwise I don’t know how we’re going to avoid a really deep recession.

What about before and after school clubs? Do we think these will stop? I use them for my kids so I can work but I can see them being one of the first things to go maybe. Although I do pay for the breakfast/after school clubs there isn’t a lot of kids who actually go in their school.

It's likely that the first port of call would be to raise prices in order to prevent the before and after school care running at a loss. If that then affects usage and it's no longer viable to run then, yes, I could see some wraparound care closing.

Hard to see how the govt doesn't have a case for energy market intervention given the situation. Of course ASC and HC, breakfast clubs will have to raise prices as they've got wage and energy cost rises.

I’m a teacher, but I used to do a job where I worked outside, in all weathers, all year. I guess I’ll just need to cope with a cold classroom however I coped working in the cold then, and wear appropriate clothing and move around a lot. The fact that’s even something I need to consider is absolutely disgraceful, and the students shouldn’t need to put up with that. Where the F are the government? What’s the Fing plan to deal with this. Because schools simply not turning their heating on cannot be the plan.

Yes I’m definitely expecting them to raise the wraparound prices.

So it will be poorer kids at home cold instead and without the tech to take part in lessons?

I'd imagine IF it ever happened there'd be provision for more vulnerable children, such as there was in Covid times.

There are minimum working temperatures for staff.