Education Education Education

[LimburgseVlaai]

Why isn't education being shouted about ?

The government has made savage cuts to the education budget - see here.

Unlike the government, schools are not allowed to budget for a deficit. They cannot borrow money. Result? Schools are having to make people redundant.

How can this be right??

And why aren't people shouting about it in the election campaign?

Are we so bludgeoned by news about the NHS, welfare cuts, Brexit, that there is just no brain space or no news space for education?

To save you having to click on the link:

A report by the National Audit Office has said schools face cuts of 8 percent in real terms by 2019-20.

While the government said school funding would be ringfenced, headteachers are facing a mountain of increased costs: higher contributions to national insurance and teachers' pensions, the introduction of the "national living wage", pay rises and the apprenticeship levy.

There is no extra money for these, nor is funding per pupil rising in line with inflation.

The NAO warned that cuts could put students' "educational outcomes at risk".

To make matters worse, the education services grant, worth £600m, is also being cut, which means there will be less money for local authorities or academies to provide services such as school improvement.

Because people think teachers are light weights who have it easy with loads of holidays, are always moaning, and why shouldn't they have it a bit tough compared to every o e else who is struggling nowadays.

Is that it? You don't care about your children's education because you are jealous of teachers having long holidays??

It's certainly slipped off the agenda since Blaire days op I agree but I think sleep is unfortunately right.

Bloody shame as I can't believe how hard and committed to my kids their high school teachers have been.

First and middle school teachers not so much and quite lazy.

If its all so bad for schools, why do they keep performing better? Maybe there is still fat that needs trimming? Dump the bad teachers that all schools have.

People think like Jamie - they don't realise that half the resources used in the classrooms are bought by the teachers! But hey 'trim the fat'.
Jamie do you think they are replacing the people they are laying off? Because they aren't and that means increased class sizes for your kids.

I agree with you op and am also baffled by the lack of coverage school cuts is getting. It's gong to leave our school system in chaos ultimately.

The 'fat' that is being trimmed used to buy pens and paper for the KS2 children at my dc's school. Parents are donating it.

What Sleep said. Parents are perhaps beginning to wake up to it a bit though, judging by the rash of people (on here and elsewhere) suddenly noticing that their dc are constantly getting supply teachers and non-subject-specialists. They want to march up to the school and complain (as if the Head wouldn't employ a decent teacher if there were an affordable one available). Will the last teacher to leave please turn out the lights...

It's a shambles! I home school, the dcs school didn't have the resources or adequate staff to meet their needs (both ASD) and this was before the cuts!

I would love to pay more tax if it translate to better education for my kids. Personal opinion: I want money to be spent on KS2 being taught by qualified specialist teachers for music, PE and MFL for every primary school. I want grants for collaboration between schools to improve best practices. I want extra after school homework support for the weaker children and stretching activities and opportunities for brightest, so every class can move forward together faster academically. I want slimlined management structure so that schools are limited in number of non teaching senior staff. Basically I want to see where my money is going instead of disappearing in the system.

Op - I said "people think". Not me.

• I'm one of the ex teachers (shortage subject in science) - and I know how teaching compares because i have prior employment history in a high pressure industry (finance)but i still couldn't deal with the insane all consuming pressure of teaching and having small children. No way will I go back to teaching unless something dramatically changes - and the last 3 schools I did supply in kept offering me a permanent position...

The unfortunate way they have of "trimming the fat" is also getting rid of any excellent teachers who can jump ship. To be honest the hours I put in I was only just earning minimum wage per hour. A basic office job would be less stress, better hours and the same per hour pay. But "people" don't get that.

I was a senior leader in a secondary school. My salary, divided by the number of hours worked each week, came to £10 an hour.

'People' have been saying how easy it is for ever. So, of course, if it is, why are there not more subject specialists working in our schools?
Why are there students who take the bursary and don't ever teach?
Why Is recruitment and retention so poor?
Why is the average teaching life five years?

I do hope that people will start to realise the crisis in education, but I won't hold my breath.

And I don't think that "people" realise that making working conditions untenable only means that those teachers with excellent subject knowledge, who are efficient and capable and professional are the ones who leave teaching - because they are the ones with transferable skills and knowledge to go into their subjects industries. Or overseas.
You are left with the ones who are trapped in teaching, or close to retirement, or the young inexperienced cheap not yet burnt out teachers.
Which do you want teaching your child?

If its all so bad for schools, why do they keep performing better?

Partly because schools are becoming more and more efficient at teaching to the test, trimming off fat like art, music, drama, trips, and taking measures like cancelling study leave for students and making them come in for revision sessions during the holidays.

And partly because exam results are decided nationally by KS2 results of that cohort. So the grade boundaries for Y11 who sat their exams last June were decided with reference to how they performed on the KS2 SATs 5 years previously, before the budget cuts and curriculum changes really kicked in.
This year's key exam result pass grades (maths and English) will be set so that they are the same as last year's.

Because it doesn't suit the Tory press to undermine Teresa May's campaign by highlighting all that's bad about life under the Tories.

Because older people (who vote more) don't have kids in school - and while they may have grandchildren (like my mum) whose schools will suffer massively, it won't stop them from voting Tory.

Because when anyone suggests higher taxes, it is like the world will end and all of the "rich" people will suddenly move abroad rather than pay a bit more. I earn over £80k, I can only do my job in the UK, and would gladly pay higher tax to improve public services.

It is big news for all of my Facebook friends, but that's just an echo chamber of people like me (young kids in school). No matter how much I share it, it won't reach those who are ignorant.

Class of 39, part time teacher with a TA covering the other hours (not just PPA). That's how fat trimming panned out at my sons school.

pens and paper ...lol

Absolutely!

Are all these redundancies through lack of funds the government's way of manipulating the job market too so that they can say there isn't a teacher shortage any more? Is that a stupid question? 15 teachers are going at my kid's secondary school, I just can't see how it's going to function properly come September.

Everyt single job advertised this week in my LEA is for an NQT! That's clearly all anyone can afford.

If its all so bad for schools, why do they keep performing better?

They don't. The great thing about the way the government keeps changing the goalposts by tweaking the exams, tweaking what they decide schools are to be judged on etc is that it is actually impossible to ascertain whether schools have got better or worse. The data can be massaged to tell you any bloody thing they want. Schools are absolutely not performing better. Any teacher can tell you that.

I just welcomed the 34th child into my Form Group today and I teach in a state selective Grammar. No room for the students (sharing classrooms with other classes), no resources (I spent £380 of my own money this academic year alone), Exam Boards who give us very little on the rushed new exams and themselves make errors, no textbooks anymore, the only subject specialist (with a related degree) in my department, and insane working hours. Worse than it has ever been and I have been teaching since 2003.

Not much time to devote to my just turned 2 year old DD...

I weep.

The problem with "Education Education Education" and its ilk, is that politicians see the NHS and Education as easy things to make sound bites for and make changes within their relatively short tenures. There is no time to work through any proposal before the next ones hit us.

However, no one could have prepared us for Gove. His 'legacy' is going to be damaging our children for years to come and no one cares at the time. Mumsnet was full of people at the time, singing his praises and thread after thread of teacher bashing. You reap what you sow

However Kitty I remember what is about to be the old spec coming in, for my subject area. In the blurb it said ' we have taken out the bits your students told us they found hard'. A entire section had disappeared; it was the section that showed what the students could do, and sorted the As and A*s from the rest. I have been examining since about 2003, and standards have dropped.

scaryteacher

I never said standards hadn't dropped...

I'm leaving teaching after ten years. My last day is next week. I will cry for a long, long time after I walk away: but I am destroyed. I have clinical anxiety. My husband sat me down a few months ago and said "the boys and me need you back".

I can't participate in it anymore: my job has become primarily about protecting the kids I teach from the educational system I teach in. Living with that on a daily basis has been too much to bear and I'm bowing out.

Education in this country is a political football. No one in charge of it has the faintest interest in making it good: poorly educated people don't vote, after all.

It's so sad I'm even struggling to write this. I teach in the school I went to: seeing it in the state it's in is heartbreaking.