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/#/ ))

Pay rises? In Scotland we have had a five year freeze followed by below inflation rises. I assume England has had a similar deal?
To be fair all you (as a country) need to do is stop voting for the same bastards.

I'm wondering about these pay rises??? I certainly haven't had one for many years.

The secondary school I work in is already operating on a skeleton staff - very few TAs or cover supervisors and ever-decreasing numbers of teachers. When people resign they are simply not being replaced. Most subjects have non-specialist staff to make up the numbers and we seem to have employed a lot of unqualified staff too.

Well done Tory voters

MistresssIggi "In Scotland we have had a five year freeze followed by below inflation rises." So why does Scotland, keep, "voting for the same bastards"?

Ah yes, the "real world". A place where companies post record profits and pay their staff as little as possible
You do realise companies are often partially owned by pension funds. If the companies dont make profits, pensioners are fcuked!

Suppermummy02

Did you miss the bit about CEOs and bonuses?

We don't vote for the bastards. But the economy is controlled by Westminster, and although education is devolved they can only work with the austerity budgets set down south.
So no sorry, they're definitely your bastards.

six the payment for school lunches and trips are compulsory at that school according to their website. I quoted for infants who all currently get fsm in state anyway.

If Manchester and other LAs want to spend £45 a week on an extra 10 hours of preschool for 3/4 year olds before they start reception who are in school nurseries then that's up to them. I'd assume there's some reasoning behind it. There are worse things to spend the money on. It's highly unlikely to be carrying on in the future with how funding is going anyway.

If Manchester stops getting an extra £45 a week for 3/4 year olds it doesn't automatically mean it will then go to West Sussex or wherever to sort out their financial difficulties. It'll probably end up with capita or an academy chain to provide some kind of service with an 'efficiency' saving.

You seem to have misunderstood me boney. When I talk about pay rises - the NUT have more than likely based their figures on above average fanciful pay rises whereas in the real world teachers get very little or no pay rises. If the nut base their figures on realistic pay rises (those that teachers are likely to actually get) then the cuts are probably not as bad as the NUT suggests. I don't believe the NUT figures provided are entirely accurate as I pointed out earlier - the schools I found which had a plus sign didn't state how much extra they would receive. But they are too happy to be very specific about the amounts that reductions will be. The nut seem to only want to give a very negative view rather than an accurate view.

Manchester are in the top 10 funded areas in the country outside of London handbag. They might get £45 per week for the 3/4 year olds but they also get quite a bit more than other areas for the school aged children too (not even counting pp funding). And the 3/4 year old funding has historically been a lot more than £45 per week because the 30 hours has been provided for more than 2 decades which is long before children got 15 funded hours nationally.

Teachers are already printing worksheets at home because there is no money for photocopying, yet no money for textbooks either. No money for glue, coloured pencils the list goes on. Timetables maxed out. Classes huge but no TA. Staff doing management jobs but not being paid the TLR. Experienced, expensive staff shown the door. And now the threat of more redundancies and even less money for resources or career advancement in the future.

And people wonder why there is a problem with teachers recruitment and retention?!

Sixisthemagicnumber

I understand what you are saying. The NUT is biased, but we don't know the figures that they used. What I (and others) can tell you from experience (even if it is anecdotal) is that the vast majority of schools are struggling to stay in the black.

Its all well and good saying (essentially) that if schools were a business they go bankrupt (not you but others), but schools are not businesses and they shouldn't be treated as one, either education is important and we pay the schools what they need or the government accepts that schools are in crisis and finds another way to sort it out.

six why do you think that the NUT / ATL figures are inaccurate? There's a bit on the same website that explains how the figures were calculated. What do you think the situation is more likely to be in 2020?

Because the NUT are a union and unions advocate for higher than inflation pay rises.
In addition, the link showing how much schools are set to lose is very specific about the losses but for those schools set to gain (there are some with a plus although not many) they don't specify how much they are set to gain. I can only assume that this so due to bias and them wanting to paint the gloomiest picture possible
all other reports I have read about this issue state that 8% of schools are set to gain yet you wouldn't think that looking at the NUT link as they seem set on spreading the message that everybody will lose and by huge sums.

The figure I quoted for or local school is accurate, I'm surprised at the SBM above who hasn't heard as our governing body had these figures 6 months ago. We've already made redundancies and are completely on the bones of our arse.

The govt want to kneecap the public education system then landgrab over to the private sector in the form of academies. If schools are all failing no-one wkll complain.

Well it doesn't matter what they used to do six as school funding has already been cut in real terms over the last few years anyway. You seem to have a problem with areas of higher need getting more funding, why is that?

I forgot your other question:
By 2020 I expect that those schools who currently get the most funding will unfortunately lose money and will have to cut costs by losing teaching assistants and replacing staff who have retired with younger staff coming in at the bottom of the payscale. But in the worst funded areas they have been working under this model for at least the last 10 years. I know the primary school my son attended until year 4 didn't have any teaching assistants above reception year (except for 2 who were allocated specifically to children with SN and funded separately). Schools will No doubt cut things like swimming lessons (or ask parents to pay contributions) but again this has been happening in badly funded schools for years. Those schools with more than one head will have to reduce to having just one head.
In an ideal world every child would have the same level of funding allocated to them each year for their education. It shouldn't be based on a postcode lottery. Ideally it should be that those funded lowest receive much more money to match those best funded but a Tory govt is never going to do that so if hey wont increase the current education budget then I think the fairest thing to do is redistribute funds so that all schools receive equal funding per pupil with additions for SN and inner London allowance.
Does anybody feel the current system is fair whereby the best funded schools get over £2000 per pupil more each year than the worst funded schools? Has anybody considered how the worst funded schools manage their budgets?
Fwiw: I didn't vote for this govt because i suspected they would shaft education and the NHS but in all honesty labour didn't do great for education either as they allowed the inequality in budget allocation to continue for a decade.

There's nothing in the methodology about putting in large pay rises for teachers, unless this is something the government have put into their funding formula? Seeing as though it's been a 1% pay rise for the last five years and the pay scale is now performance related on the discretion of the head and the unions haven't been able to change these I doubt it's going to go the other way by 2020. Pensions have been buggered as well.

It says in the methodology that due to inflation schools that do get more with the new formula won't get more in real terms. As they've used the formula cooked up by the worst funded LAs themselves this is presumably as good as it gets for them.

Definitely a race to the bottom with no winners.

I have a problem With it handbag because I lived in an area which falls in the top 10 best funded and one which is in the bottom 10 and I have seen first hand what differences that provides educationally and I don't think it is fair.

It's interesting isn't it that many teachers, nurses etc are in the group I would see as "just managing". Yet are being told they face further cuts to t&c and pay for years, which tells me the tories have FA interest in helping working people. And yet people keep voting them in...

Six if it is all a supposedly 'fair' redistribution as if!!! how come that 92% of schools are worse off in the proposed budget cut and possibly (!) 8% will gain (how much). That doesn't make mathematical sense and is, if you ask horse shit.

As another poster said this is a massive budget cut where nearly all of Englaish and Welsh schools will be forced to their knees. It is a despicable move by the Tori government and I find it very strange how vested you are in this topic seeing that your own children go to private school. Why are you here defending the governments hostile move on state school ?

I really wonder about the dystopian vision the Tori party have for our country .

They are not coping with prisons
Social welfare is being cut
NHS phased out

A solution to lowering crime, improving public health and boosting the economy is........ wait.......... education.

I am disgusted at these ill thought out government ideas.

Six only 8% of schools gaining isn't OK! Or have I misunderstood? 100% should be gaining.
Supermummy why shouldn't people get an above inflation payrise? Everyone I mean, not just CEOs etc?
FairyLiz can you reassure us? Would you have heard about the cuts officially by now, as a SBM?

"the tories have FA interest in helping working people"

Why, of course they don't.

The cuts are coming Clay, I'm surprised Fairy hasn't heard. The figures most schools work on are based on their own calculations based on the new formula/method that they have had for months.

HF my oldest child is not at private school - never has been

Well they do six. Every pupil has the same basic allocation and then extra is added for deprivation, Sen, Eal, etc. If the children in your ds' school area don't have additional needs they don't get additional funding. You can't compare for example my ds' reception class which is mainly white British with a class in Manchester where 95% of pupils have Eal. The children's needs are different and the children with the most needs get more money spent to help them. That doesn't mean that it's fair other schools are underfunded, but that's not going to be addressed by the new funding formula.

The only place I've seen a TA where they are not needed for additional needs support has been in private school.