To ask Headteachers and SLTs is it really that bad?

[Paris2023]

Press since the start of term and now more recently has focussed on schools running out of money. Perhaps having to shorten days to cover outgoings. With more recent news of further austerity and I believe limited funding what do current HTs and members of SLTs think?

what is the solution if more money isn’t available? A lot of money is being swallowed by higher energy bills.

I was PA to a Head years ago
People under estimate what we do - my role was to be bursar/ business manager too it was full on and I had to cover reception if the receptionist was off!

Chances are the HT will have to take over some teaching so a PA will be invaluable.

Just a question: has class TAs always been a thing in the UK? Where I grew up (France) we didn't have this, unless it was a TA assigned to a particular child. There was one kid in my elementary school who had cerebral palsy, and they had a TA and another who threw chairs around (although I'm not quite sure what the cause of the chair-throwing was!). But we never just had one for the class.

What has come through here is there are enormous inefficiencies in the system
Often the PA also runs the entire admissions system, dealing with hundreds of applications, the data transfers, the file transfers, the safeguarding transfers, the keeping the LA updated of every application and its position on a waiting list this week, all transition admin, etc.
Ridiculous that this is replicated across schools. Ditto ‘SLT’/management structure.
Keep teachers in the classroom and outsource the management and admin to non-teachers.
When I was in school there are classes of 40 and we went to school to learn, whereas school are now expected to take over basic parenting as well eg ‘paying a parent’s fare to take a child up an appointment’
The who system needs an overhaul.
What is Sir Keir’s funded spending plan?

@Jourdain11 how old are you? Certainly not common when I was at Primary in 70/80s but teaching wasn't great then, no differentiation etc. Became more common but so did closing special schools so more help needed in classrooms and more differentiation

How old are you jangolina? There haven't been classes of 40 since the 60s.

SLT in Scotland. Things really are tight. A lot of staff are buying their own resources and food for kids in the school I work in. Everyone is stressed and feeling the strain

Ancient. Yes was in primary on the 60s. Now tracing in secondary so have see mission-creep over the years and schools expected to take on massively more than education.

No

In 1998 I had 36 children in my reception class and no TA (infants school)
By 2002 I had a part time TA in year 1

They became more popular around the year 2000 but certainly not 1 per class.

How she laughs
Was certainly common in the 90s at Key Stage 2
I had 36 in my reception class in 1998

They became popular because the special education facilities were dismantled in the name of inclusion.

Not every child’s education can be met via mainstream education hence the massive impact on places for those who just can’t manage.

Well said.
This whole expectation of TAs just leads to ridiculous expectations in marking etc )every piece of work every day) and teachers just suck it up rather doing the Gallic shrug.
Look at how things are done better in other countries where they somehow manage well-educated cohorts without extra ‘funding’

Are you suggesting that special schools don't need extra funding?

36 is a lot though and unusual, and also not desirable. Not the point jangolina appears to be making with her wistful nostalgia.

I work in a secondary school and to be brutally honest, my experience of volunteers is that often they create more work for the rest of us. I know that sounds harsh, but it's the truth. We get a lot of people asking to volunteer and then being shocked by the level of SEN/mental health/self-harm, safeguarding issues that they come across so they either get upset (and staff who are already rushed off their feet have to comfort them), or they just don't come back so the time and effort spent training them and sorting the paperwork was wasted, or they get overly-involved with vulnerable families as though they've got some sort of 'saviour complex'. The latter is particulary problematic because it comes from a good place but can throw a real spanner in the works and then the pastoral/safeguarding teams have to spend time sorting it out. Because there is a massive shortage of special school places we have kids in our mainstream secondary who are emotionally and intellectually at Reception level. We have kids with severe MH issues who would have been in hospital a few years ago but now we're just left to manage the situation. We need sufficient funding so we can recruit and retain trained and experienced professionals.

I think the point is most schools (certainly London secondary schools, which is my area of knowledge) have been getting ‘creative’ with staffing for years as it is. We are down to bare bones.

We used to have a whole admin and finance team, and a student services team. We are now to the business manager, two finance officers who are on a job share, a receptionist/administrator and the Head’s PA. One person doing attendance for 1200 kids. All but the receptionist also do before and after school duties, playground duties at break/lunch etc.

Everyone is stretched to the maximum.

We aren’t selling baked beans at a loss here. We are educating children.

We need more money.

wistful nostalgia 😁
hardly!
But if you prefer to snipe rather than looking at he reality - just enjoy the misery.

I am being presumptuous because your points come across like you have no idea about the difficult decisions taken to balancing budgets. You can’t tell my boss how to do my job because I am the boss and I couldn’t take any advice from someone who has fantastically missed the point of what I’m saying about having PA’s in a school that we haven’t ever had for 40 years and the school functioned very well Thankyou!!

@juggleit well said
Yes theses threads always get posters on who have no idea what the world is like outside the public sector or any inkling of balancing income and expenditure.
Still no response to how Sir Keir would pay for all the wish list.

OK. Time for you to learn how to process admissions. Shouldn't take too long, there's only about 11 separate acts of Parliament, 5-9 of statutory guidance, local authority policies, your own policies, the Nolan principles, the particular computer system run by the LA and how it integrates (or doesnt) with the school systems, the legal timescale, the cut-off dates by law, how to create a ranking file, present it to governors with fully evidenced documentation for each category, handle the calls and emails, the people who think that shouting at you will get them what they want, those who don't understand what's required, the ehcp admissions process, how to create new records in your MIS, what of the hundred or so fields must be populated, download, process and import ATFs, obtain UPNs, apply FSM entitlement, request and I.port CTFs whilst knowing how to edit the code if they've come through in a later version, request paper files from previous schools where you don't have the previous school information, arrange for searches of the lost pupil database, spot potential safeguarding, health or social issues in those applications, quite possibly need an understanding of ecclesiastical law, history and canonical decisions, spot false documents,....

Closing date's next Monday. You ready?

Yes theses threads always get posters on who have no idea what the world is like outside the public sector or any inkling of balancing income and expenditure.

And the arrogant assumption that a headteacher would have no idea of balancing income and expenditure. FFS.

I'm sure I remember a school secretary at both my Primary and Secondary schools and I was at Primary in the 70s.

There wasn't all the red tape, assessments etc then either

@JangolinaPitt schools are a funny animal as their funding is given by the Government, it's their main form of income. They are also told how to spend approximately 80% of this funding (staffing). So you would think if they are told what to spend most of their money on they would actually be given the money to do that

I genuinely woukd like to see some of the posters on this thread running schools.

The DfE made every school gave 'free' financial advice from auditors. The final independent assessment of these auditors was that most of their assessments were laughable in their practicality , and saved tiny amounts of money.

Ah, @juggleit . That's enough time to deal with the phone call from an angry parent who's threatening to come down and sort you all out.

You need to determine the admissions policy for 2024-25 now. Do you need to hold a consultation on this? Best get a move on if you do. No, nobody's here who can explain to you what this means, just that if you haven't done it, the school is fucked. If you google the law on it, and work out where else you can find information, you might be able to swing it. Assuming you're aware of the governance - they can do this side, as not only is it admin, they're volunteers, so can't be expected to organise it.

How about the documentation that's legally required in the event of appeals? You'd better find that and get it all up and compliant, as appeals can come in at any time, not just after National Offer Day. I'm sure you can work out what day that is. You'll have to find out how to extract the data for the documentation from the previous year's figures, but nobody's here to tell you that you need to do that or how to do it.
It's also vital for when people appeal against their EHCPs, so you'd better get it done already as the consultations are already happening.

Hopefully you'll have a great time just pottering about with it, it's simple enough for you to take it on, after all.

Oh, and then there's all the bundle production, scheduling and minuting meetings, doing employment checks, helping the other admin staff, dealing with teaching staff, constant parents, a bit of parentpay, teachers2parents has started identifying your messages as spam, so you're going to have to rewrite the letters for each child and email them separately, we've run out of photocopier paper and the hot water tap is leaking so you need to find the warranty documentation and call the company whilst getting the caretaker to come down off the roof where he's repairing holes to turn the water supply off.

Best get your lesson planning done in the huge swathes of free time you hve from only doing Head's PA stuff.

Tl;dr - any teacher can teach.

Sorry, got distracted by a delivery (yes, I'm working).

Any teacher can teach - but that doesn't mean the other roles in education are easily absorbed by teachers. Some are, like Admissions, more specialised - and they're the moneymaking roles in that they're what bring the income in.