to be alarmed at school budget cuts

[clayspaniel]

Apparently some schools are going to be badly hit by the new fair funding formula - inner city areas hit hardest. If you put in your postcode it tells you what sort of cuts your school could face, and how this could equate to teachers and TAs jobs. Not encouraging!

(( www.schoolcuts.org.uk/#/ ))

Most of the schools in my area (both primary and secondary) are facing an average cut of £500 per pupil. This is unsustainable, schools will have to close.

The link in the OP says 92% of schools will have their funding cut, so 8% will either see no change (more likely I think) or an increase. I couldn't find any schools that benefited and I looked at a few in some badly funded areas.

I presume although you didn't have the funding your local schools/ average home life is not so dire?

You presume wrong. A member of the household has a severe learning and physical disability (my oldest child) and this impacts on the entire household and is a known factor which adversely affects education of other children in he family. In addition the primary school my middle child attended was dire, he was not helped to reach his potential and the teacher admitted holding him back because she didn't have the resources to differentiate his work much. I got fed up of my child being used to listen to other kids read and helping them with their maths when he was finished his. Fortunately, despite our adverse home life my Child was resilient and bright and I did my best to support him and he won a scholarship at a prep school in year 4 and that school helped him enormously and he then won a 100% bursary to a highly regarded private senior school. We have been lucky but not helped by an underfunded school with overrun teachers who can't offer much differentiation in a class of 30 with no TA's. I don't know what the future holds for my youngest child as he is not yet of school age but I am hoping the new distribution of school funds will go some way towards preventing the situation we had with our middle child. It probably won't help and no doubt we will have another decade of stress and worry about the state of our local schools.

I am hoping the new distribution of school funds will go some way towards preventing the situation we had with our middle child.

Pretty much all schools will have less money than now.

It's so demoralising. I work in a fab school. We are oversubscribed and demand for places is growing. We are understaffed and working our backsides off. If the school are forced to make staffing cuts we won't be able to ensure the wellbeing of our pupils. I hate that education always takes a hit, it is the most important sector.

Is there a more impartial link about the funding rather than the NUT one? I'm not sure the NUT one is highly reliable because of those schools I found with a plus sign it could only state that the schools would not lose any money but they didn't say how much they would gain. Having looked at other resources it seems that some schools will gain but the NUT are clearly only keen to tell us about the depth of any cuts.

Pretty much all schools will have less money than now

Most will have less but I found some with a plus sign using that link but the link doesn't tell us how much they will gain. Most articles are staying that 92% will lose out.
so there must be 8% who will not miss out.

A few people on this thread seem to be under the impression that their school will benefit from this

I think some people have thought that if the money is shared more equitably, their school will be better off - eg the problems in West Sussex have been widely reported. I was under this impression (ie that my son's school would be better off under the new formula). However, all it actually means is that my son's school will lose a lot less than other schools (I think it was £8 a head). However, as it has been under the cosh for a few years now, that is no comfort at all.

Apart from needing ENOUGH money, what we need is a fair funding formula where each school gets the same based on the number of pupils. Then you can have extra funding for special needs provision etc and to cater for higher salaries in London for example. But it should not depend on the affluence of the area (or whether it votes Tory or Labour). Affluent areas can have poor families, poor areas can have affluent families. Kids cost the same to educate.

Yes to what myfavourite said. That was what I tried to say early in the thread but I know I said it very badly. I don't know if we can afford for all the badly funded schools to have their funding raised up to the level of the best funded schools so it seems fairer to ensure that each pupil gets the same regardless of postcode (which means redistributing the current education budget) and I agree that there would need to be additions for SN and a premium for inner London schools that is actually relative to the additional cost of running a school in the capital.

Don't accept the false claims that the government can't afford to fund our schools.

They can. They are choosing not to.

Yes, the govt can afford to fund lots of essential things but choose not to and based on history they are not going to provide lots more money so the question is how can it be fairer given the current level of funding?

well it can't can it - how can cutting and cutting and cutting again be fair to anyone?

Redistribution would be fairer to those who currently receive the lowest level of funding (so long as the funds are genuinely redistributed and not just cut for everyone).

Why the hell does my kids school look to lose £100k when the catholic school down the road loses less than £7k???!!!!!

According to that website the school I work in will lose the equivalent of 6 teachers. we are already struggling and live in one of the most poorly funded counties. I actually can't see how we could possibly cope with a further massive budget cut.

OP, thank you for this thread. I had no idea. Yes my dc's school is affected They will loose staff bastard fucking tories

christinarossetti
no state school has 'more' funding than they need to deliver a good standard of education

That would be why west Sussex schools are having to think about having a short teaching week then.

Good to know.

This is how the Tories operate.
Quite so, so think upon it if you voted for them and think about where to put your cross next time. The money would be found if the will was there. But no, it's tax cuts for the extremely wealthy, because they need 'incentives' and money spent on vanity projects.

All the areas I have checked so far have been losers, including schools I know to be in deprived areas, where money spent on good teaching reaps dividends beyond measure. This is the country which Theresa May wants to work for everyone, does she, my eye.

What I find interesting (but not at all surprising, given the Government's track record to date) is that, in my town, it's the schools serving the poorest areas that are hardest hit - by 4 to 5 times as much.

One local school in a deprived part of Leeds is losing over £1700 per student.

It's not redistribution is it? It's just plain old budget cuts.

My children's school is set to lose £41k and one teacher by 2020 . The county in which I live has been underfunded for a long time, with similar schools in neighbouring counties getting quite a bit more per child. The headteacher talked about it to us briefly last week when we had a PTA coffee morning (he said that any money the PTA raises is money they don't have to find). He is travelling to the House of Commons soon with other headteachers to discuss this.

It is only £185 per pupil but that adds up to a lot.

Have any areas been net gainers?

I don't understand your point jefferson