To think that school budgets are going to fail our children

[BakeOffDisasters]

I'm coming from this as a teacher and parent and I'm so worried about how things are going in some schools due to tightening budgets.

I'm facing a day without an LSA in a year 1 class of 30 today with a lot of challenging needs. Across our ks1, three support staff have now been signed off and there aren't enough LSAs in the school to cover. So that will be one LSA for four classes today. This will mean that children with the highest needs will miss out on the support they so desperately need for behaviour, emotional issues and academic needs. Supply agencies are too expensive for some schools so it turns into a skeleton staff.

My son has SEN and I'm currently in the process of looking for a school for him. From questioning management across schools, the message seems uniform that with the cost of living, budgets are tightening and this has a knock on effect to staffing, specifically support staff. All teaching and support staff are the most valuable resource to children in schools, without them, children will suffer.

I feel so disillusioned with it all right now.

@mgmnt you really have no idea what you are talking about and the way you talk about children with sen is absolutely despicable. My son has sen and if you think for one second that children with sen get extra support so easily you are very much mistaken. Parents have to fight very hard to get support for their children in order for them to access education. My son has a high level of intelligence but struggles with social, emotional and sensory processing so requires support to manage those needs. A lot of the time children with sen are failed by the system due to underfunding and huge delays in needs being assessed.

I 100% agree! And it's ridiculous to think that taking away the inadequate funding that some SEN kids have will make any difference to the situation overall. It just won't!

Part of the issue at the moment is that many schools are sitting on large surpluses post Cv19. They will diminish this year but at the moment they are there. So on paper there is not a current crisis but teacher pay, support staff cost rises and fuel costs will eradicate many surpluses this year.

Primary numbers have fallen off the cliff in many areas due in part to reduced immigration and London boroughs are consulting on closure but other large cities will not be far behind.

Please don’t perpetuate the myth that it’s parents not wanting their kids in Sen schools that is the issue. There are many many more that would love their kids to get an Sen school place but there are not the places,

Classroom resources - honestly, if not a few donations from parents - our kids at school's nursery wouldn't have even ONE PENCIL. We simply keep buying Poundland stuff (pencils, crayons) that our kids could paint or draw.
They simply need new chairs, new toilet seats, etc - everything is falling apart. Books look like a toilet paper - probably 2 pages out of 10 left.
One of the parents in our group is a maintenance and did great job this week fixing some things from his own pocket. I just can't believe these things happening in 2022. I'm from Eastern Europe and believe me, even in our poor country they are never short of pencils or can't afford to fix the toilet seats....

Is this a school nursery?
Sounds like poor management, schools are not so desperate that they dont have pencils if they are well managed and realistic about costs and structures.

I also think that what people sometimes don’t get is that if all Sen children go then their funding will go with them so the school won’t even have the same inadequate funding it has now. A chunk of a schools funding is for low level Sen support but is not ring fenced so in these times it is very likely it is being used to fund other basics. Also children with ehcps and 1-1 TA’s that ta often assists other children in the class. That child goes and the class ta is likely to go completely. I had one particular parent in my sons ms class that used to moan a lot and put in complaints about my son who had asd and full time 1-1. I often couldn’t get near my sons ta in the mornings as they were talking to them about issues with their child. When my son moved to specialist the ta was moved from that class and they had a teacher only

Of course there are parents who are desperate for non-existent special school places. However, I know from my own experience that there are many parents who will not consider even looking at special school places. Sometimes it is because they rightly believe their DC will be better off in supported mainstream education. However we have a number of pupils who would do much better in a specialist setting(if available) with staff with much more comprehensive SEND training but whose parents will not even consider it.

This is not the case in my school. Any surplus we had has gone with paying for supply when staff were off with covid, putting in hand gel dispensers etc and paying for extra cleaning and staff for bubbles. We're starting off in a rubbish place financially and it will only get worse.

This is not the case in my school. Any surplus we had has gone with paying for supply when staff were off with covid, putting in hand gel dispensers etc and paying for extra cleaning and staff for bubbles. We're starting off in a rubbish place financially and it will only get worse.

It's the same at my school. We've never been in such a precarious position, and for the first time we can't see any way out. There's nothing left to cut back on, and with the current financial situation it's only going to get worse.

I have never come across that in practise amongst Sen parents myself although I accept there may be a few but like I said I don’t think that’s the main issue. When my own son was in ms the head often used to say to me that I was choosing to send my son to a mainstream school and he shouldn’t be in one. He was giving this impression to other people so maybe they thought I was one of those parents who didn’t want specialist like you suggest. The truth was I didn’t want him in that school anymore than the head did but didn’t have a choice unless I homeschooled which I wanted to do even less. I did get him into specialist in the end but it was a massive fight and I had to go to tribunal even to get an ehcp assessment

I worked as a secondary teacher for almost 30 years before retiring four years early due to not great health. There have always been staff shortages in some subjects often Maths and Science because graduates in these subjects can command higher salaries in the private sector in industry. I think it is sensible to offer these graduates 5 percent higher salary than other teachers for first 5 years of their career. Budgets are not good. However I was always amazed at how many staff had such poor sick records. I often went 3 years without a day off but some were constantly off sick. Would come back after 6 months sick with stress work a few months then off sick with stress again. I honestly think these people are not suited to teaching. If budget has to cover paying staff off sick for 6 months on full pay them 6 months on half pay then hard to pay for supply teacher to cover classes. I would change system to 3 month's full pay, then 3 months half pay. Then hold job open but only statutory sick pay for 6 months and if they don't return lose their job. It's not fair on children to take money for 6 months leaving them with no teacher. I think other professions should do the same. I have read about 1/3 of all nurses are off on full sick pay at any given time of year. One of my neighbours, a nurse took 4 months off with bad back on full pay, yet told me she had managed to decorate with wallpaper her bedroom and hall. Then she went back to work on short shifts phasing back in. I feel very sorry with teachers and nurses who have colleagues like that because that is why they are overworked. I know my v of ew won't be popular but I have observed this in teaching first hand over many years and almost always same teachers off sick and same ones having to cover their lessons and break duties.

Or we could reduce the number of teachers off sick with stress by improving working conditions?

I'm a SEND teacher and we're feeling it too despite historically being one of the few schools in our authority with a reasonable budget.
We've been told that this year the books balance and that there will be a very small surplus but that next year we can expect to be several hundred thousand in deficit. We've been told "no redundancies needed...yet"
So watch this space.
I'm top of my salary scale and so likely to be a priority in redundancies and to be honest I've got to the stage where I don't worry about it any more. Teaching is so stressful now and if they start reducing the number of TA's our classes will quickly become unsafe. So I'm probably happy to get out.

Does anybody have experience of teacher redundancy packages and how generous they are?

When my own son was in ms the head often used to say to me that I was choosing to send my son to a mainstream school and he shouldn’t be in one.

Gosh, we are absolutely not allowed to say that.

I knew he shouldn’t have been saying it too so I confirmed our conversations back in writing by email a few times just in case I ever needed for anything

I was having this conversation about a year 7 student yesterday.
We have basically come to the realisation that the school is setting her up to fail so she can access a specialist unit in order to access some form of education. Mainstream school just doesn't work for her for MANY reasons and it just makes me so sad.

I work in mental health in a secondary school but I also double up covering the isolation side of things which is especially hard for me and the students. One minute I'm helping them with suicidal thoughts or self harm and the next I'm giving out on them because they've sworn at a teacher or truanted! It's a very conflicting role 😞