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.

On a slightly different note it's the same now in most council's. Many have a big budget deficit often related to social care care costs, in the past government has bailed council's out. It may not be the same this year. There is a lot of pain to come.

www.theguardian.com/education/2022/oct/22/exclusive-90-of-uk-schools-will-go-bust-next-year-heads-warn

Not a SLT but a teacher. It's really bad. Morale wasn't great after covid and is going downhill. Basics like printer ink are becoming unaffordable never mind salaries. I've never seen our HT or SLT look so stressed. I predict an exodus at management level because they literally can't run the school on the budget we have and it will only get worse.

This thread has really opened my eyes. This is such an awful situation.amomgst everything else that is going on just now. Naively I did not realise schools covered their own energy bills, I thought this would be covered by the council/LA.

I'm in Scotland though, perhaps things work differently up here? I have never heard of it being possible for a school to go 'bust' (except private schools).

Haven't know a (primary) school that's had a computer room for years - they've all been turned into classrooms. The technology that schools do have if so poor there's no way it would work for online tests.

Same with suggestions to cut general TAs. Haven't had a general TA in the last 6 or 7 years. All TAs are assigned to children with an EHCP and thus the school is fulfilling a legal obligation - it is breaking the law not to provide these.

I am actually hearbroken by how bad school finance are. I've worked in my lovely school for a decade and we have had to make cut after cut. We are already in deficit and the surplus runs out this financial year.

We have a breakfast club, afterschool club, hire out the rooms, have an amazing PTA, parents contribute, we have volunteers.

The quality of education is suffering and the sen provision is no way near as good as we know it was just a few years ago.

In England, many schools are not run by the LA, but by academies/multi-academy trusts. These are generally not for profit organisations, but they take on the management of the school budgets and receive funding directly from central government. They are responsible for providing all services like HR, payroll etc to their staff as well.

Schools are not meant to have a deficit budget, so if the MAT runs out of reserves, they have to make do with what is available to the school. In general, schools aren't meant to pay staff salaries via parental donations etc either.

When people talk about schools going bust, they really mean the MAT has run out of money. In reality, what that means is the school will continue to run, but it may have no funds to e.g. pay supply staff, so if lots of teachers are unwell one day, the school would have to close (as we saw during covid).

That said, I do think things will get tight, even for LA schools in England, because as has been said, local authorities have no money either- so they won't be able to bail out schools with ever increasing costs.

After school clubs are also closing around me rather than generating extra income, as many more parents are WFH and so can have primary-aged children entertaining themselves for an hour or two even if they're working. Incidentally, in a small school staying open for ASC, clubs etc inevitably falls to teachers fairly often - as soon as the ASC member of staff is off sick, there is no one else to ask unless the head or classroom teachers step in.

@FatAgainItsLettuceTime there's a school in Brixton which in the past the head made very profitable but they had a pool they could hire out.

I've just googled to try and find the name and actually it also looks like that arrangement ended with a bit of controversy and money being funnelled in the wrong direction!

Is there an element of HTs should now inform parents of the situation as lobbying of our MPs must be done.

I'm a primary teacher in a very small school.
We have a TA mornings only across KS2, and 2 in our Reception/1/2 class. I assume these will be first to be made redundant, although it may be that a teacher has to go instead.

At the end of this financial year we are predicting that we will be just over 30k in deficit. This is solely due to energy and unfunded staff pay rises.

I found this out when I handed in some receipts for things I have bought for my class this half term. Nothing much, paint, a book, cooking ingredients, it came to £58.
HT said that all of ks2 classroom budget is now spent. That means until April, no new glue, books, pencils, no cooking etc.

Our trip can't happen unless we get enough 'voluntary' contributions.

Schools are not allowed to run at a deficit, although this has been waived as long as it has been clawed back at the d Ed me if the current 3 year budget - but how the hell can that happen?

In theory we could manage with 1 teacher across both KS2 classes, but it would be virtually impossible in practise. 32 pupils from Y3 - Y6, with 4 SEND children.
Not to mention the 5 subjects my colleague and I lead across our small federation. Neither one of us would want that job.

I think small schools will close.

Not just teaching staff but support staff too. I have just resigned from the 2nd school in a row where I have been effectively doing 2 people’s jobs for 6 months at a time. As in, a vacant post, going unadvertised for 6 months and me doing all that job and my own as well with no end in sight. I have left because the stress was unmanageable and was making me ill. The solution? They have listed my job a band lower, so the person who gets that post will be doing the 2 jobs for even less money. It’s not as if support staff cost the earth, schools are just stripping away roles all the time and existing staff are filling the vacuum. I was attendance officer /EWO and that’s a pretty essential role but even then it was grotesquely underpaid and there was just me where there should have been 2 (at least) in a school of 1000 children.

Thank you for this explanation. What a sorry state of affairs. In Scotland all of our schools are either run by the local authority or are independent fee paying schools, so although LAs are cash strapped I don't think we will be facing quite the same issues.

I'm SLT and it is bad. We have held reserves by being cautious about spending but they are almost depleted. We have to ration stationery and copying. We are not replacing two teachers and will have bigger classes. We are making TAs redundant at the end of this year. Funding for SEN children does not cover their support but next year they will only be supported for the hours that we can fund. We need building work that we cannot afford to do. Our Head will teach classes for the first time in ten years. External support that we pay for will no longer be available to us. We are in a much better position than any other school in our MAT.

We have never had a negative budget but this year will go £30,000 in debt, the only way we can cover is to loose staff. Costs for everything are increasing exponentially and the unfunded pay rise will cripple us. When hauled before the local authority to explain the deficit, their advice was to " make savings" but they couldn't say where!

Thank you for this, very helpfully explained 😊

Just to add another viewpoint on this (and I now know why it was done).
I've recently returned from well over six months' absence. (Not my choice and the reasons are not relevant here, suffice to say it wasn't life-threatening but is life-altering.)
I've had two meetings with HR where they have stated 'if you have another extended absence, we will have to proceed to the next stage of the absence protocol'.
The takeaway from that is that I'm an expensive employee (both UPS and have a TLR). If I 'went' they would be able to replace me with a classroom teacher, and would devolve my responsibilities to other members of staff, dressed up as a whole school contribution so they could qualify for UPS (maybe). That way they would pay absolutely nothing for several people covering the things that I do.
It was suggested to me that I consider medical retirement at one of the meetings - I can't afford and don't want that.
However, there is someone somewhere, counting the pennies. As I said, I guess I'm expensive in the grand scheme of things.
But I would like to add the rider that my school is part of a large academy trust.
I'm just a name and number.
That's all it comes down to these days.
Schools / academies / trusts are just businesses who happen to provide education.
Saying all that, there is also the huge issue of SEND funding now being portioned out to schools, rather than bids being put forward from the LEA 'pot'.
Schools are damned because whatever they do, there is always a shortfall in provision.

Attendance officers are so useful, and it's a tough job. Previous school got rid of ours, and tried to get teachers to do the job, with limited success- we were expected to phone home for absences in our tutor group! Obviously, this was massively time consuming, and also happened after 3pm, so no good if, e.g. a child went missing on the way to school (I know it's an unlikely scenario, but it's part of the reason schools do these things).

I think in secondaries, unfortunately all these "back office" jobs which aren't immediately visible to parents/students will go, before student facing roles do.

Public services do generally rely on goodwill to paper over the cracks. And we won’t have much to compare it to unless we have kids spread out over a wide range and can remember the New Labour days.

maybe as I’ve been a governor then a parent, I can see it really has degraded. Covid has kept a lot of parents out of schools so again, it’s disguised but it’s appalling. My Ds’s secondary school for example, the school building is falling apart, they use photocopies instead of proper text books, the toilets are horrific, everything is just old and tired.

The current government don’t use state services that much and it’s too centralised so those in the department for education have no clue what the front line is like.

You would loose money renting out for all of those unless the renter are prepared to pay £100 an hour which they are not.

Who will make the hot toast? How do you keep toast hot? (ie you need kitchen staff who are making lunch and not available) Who would sell the toast? Bank the money?

School discos- loose money and take a vast amount of unpaid staff time. They are a social event for children- not a Money maker.

Car washing- that's an adult only job. Shall I get the TAs to do that rather than be with children? I could stick a broom up there backsides and hire them out as cleaners as well. You need a lot of insurance to wash cars.

Book swap- wont make money

2nd hand uniforms sales- the government now expects us to sell 2nd hand uniform at little or no cost. Doesn't amex any money.

Grandparents- ok. Are they prepared to be hit, kicked, spat on? Can the calm down a distraught child? Change a nappy?

Listening to readers? It isnt 1998. No-one listens to readers. They teach reading.

Put away PE equipment and wash pots. so 5 minute jobs- how would that help?

I work in finance in a MAT and across all schools we set a balanced budget. We have a mix of mostly primary with two secondary schools. Some of our schools had a deficit budget set this year which are supported by other schools in the Trust. These are for specific reasons e..g trying to build up the school, falling numbers of pupils etc. Across the MAT we had a balanced budget with a small surplus that we use to build up a surplus to support the trust in times of need.

we have had the following changes since we set the budget

• 5% unfounded increase in teaching salaries
• 9% (roughly) increase in support staff so TAs, caretakers, office staff etc
• utility increases
• general inflation estimates

We’ve rerun the forecast and it results in a £1m deficit with no indication of whether any of this will be funded and we’re unlikely to hear soon of any changes to funding due to the chaos in the Conservative party. We’ve stripped TAs as much as we can whilst trying to maintain educational standards, we’re using our buying power to reduce costs for trust wide contracts and materials and educational resources are constantly under review. We hire out facilities where possible and have after school clubs in some schools but it depends on the demographic of each school. We’re holding firm at the moment awaiting the fall out from this but options are reviewing staffing, TAs and SLT structures, school day e.g. finish early one day or closing schools that we looking to develop. As a trust overall we were in a good position, better than a lot of schools who are in a worse position that we are.

Was that a secondary school?

I think, to be fair, more and more HTs are coming out and saying this in the national press, on twitter etc. More MAT CEOs are also speaking out too.

But it would be very difficult for a HT to go to parents and say "Sorry, because of funding your child's class won't have a TA this year" or "Because of funding, we won't have a school librarian anymore, and the library won't be open after school for revision, either". In many schools, it would make the HT unpopular with parents, and make their lives extremely difficult. It might also affect recruitment to the school.

I do think heads should be more honest with parents in general- but I also understand why they don't do it.

The national teaching/education unions are also talking about the situation- one of their key points is that any payrises for staff (including support staff who are often are on very low wages) must be fully funded- otherwise it also causes schools more problems, as they have to find money to pay these from somewhere.

Yes, a secondary school.

Teachers can’t say too much otherwise they’re accused of being “political”