It wasn’t funded! (DfE liars!)

[MrsMurphyIWish]

Am so sick of reading this: A Department for Education spokesperson said: "The offer was funded, including major new investment of over half a billion pounds, and helps tackle issues teachers are facing like workload."

0.5% was to be funded only, rest would be out of current budgets which my school is already running at a deficit. We currently are using portaloos as our toilet system doesn’t work! Our head couldn’t possibly afford to pay staff and fix our building.

A “task force” would help with work load. We don’t need another (over paid) committee to tell us what we already know - we already have so many rehashed strategies about “working smarter, not harder” under corporate speak titles. Not one strategy can put right Ofsted toxicity, dealing with suicidal pupils, dealing with starving pupils - this is what affects teacher mental health. We take the burden of other’s mental health.

Anyway, AIBU to wish the media would actually write the truth and challenge the government on their double speak?

I thought the comments about teachers being akin to “petulant kids” and heads not having “backbones” were unnecessary.

MrsMurphylwish
Teachers like others post on social media using abbreviations and other short cuts. They may not always use standard English. This doesn't mean they can't. They may also miss out punctuation for speed. This again does not mean they can't use punctuation correctly. Get a grip.

I don't even understand your post. So how can you expect people to sympathise. Are you talking about how the pay rise is to be funded.

@MrsMurphyIWish I agree. Criticising someone's SPAG isn't going to change their mind though is it. It's just made you look like that person.

@MrsMurphyIWish Also, there are a lot of petulant kids and heads with no backbone. So many teachers getting abused by kids and heads who have no backbone in sticking up for their own behaviour policies. There is also a huge crisis in funding. Both of those things can be right.

And his dad a maintained school governor, when part of the governance role is financial accountability.

@Dodgeitornot True on all you have written. Hopefully, haven’t derailed this thread with allowing myself to get riled up. Too many teacher threads at the moment ..!

Really? That I wasn’t aware of.

All I can think of it that their families must teach in/have dealings with schools in affluent areas. I used to teach in S Staffs (when GW is MP) and schools budgets are tighter than where I now am. However, parents would subside extras easily.

*school’s

On current TA wages, it is very difficult to recruit support staff. Obviously students with ECHPs deserve support, but how many people are there who are willing to take responsibility e.g. for a child with significant medical needs for less money than they could earn in retail/hospitality?

It is going to lead to a situation where potentially some students with serious needs will not be able to attend school. And these needs can't always be met by a teacher as they can involve e.g. providing a medical treatment outside of the classroom.

I'd also add parents who complain that their child doesn't have a "proper" Maths/Science/Geography/MFL teacher- well, if you want one of those, you have to offer a salary comparable with industry...

And of course, when a class is being taught by supply, sometimes the supply teacher doesn't know about the students with SEN in the class and doesn't support them correctly, which returns to the previous issue!

In terms of counselling etc, schools already pick up so much of the slack for CAMHS etc (because their budgets have been slashed) but there may well come a point where this can no longer happen, and you will end up with a lot more teens reaching crisis point, as that is the only way CAMHS will see them.

schools’

43% pupil premium. The town is fairly deprived, through seasonal employment.

@Didgerydoo they could not spend £8 million on portraits of the King to display in schools and other public places.

They could stop paying £30 billion in fake PPE contracts.

They could find the money. It doesn’t need to be ‘magicked’. Because it won’t directly benefit themselves or their mates financially though they are not interested.

The DfE have majorly ballsed up, and I think it comes from years and years of not actually talking to teachers and headteachers before implementing policies (a well-known problem that they've been told off for by the Ed Select Committee a few times).

They come up with stuff, and it looks ok to them on paper, or on a spreadsheet, so it's now policy.

People who work in schools are then horrified and say 'what is this unworkable piece of shit' but then have to try to make it work.

The pay rise was numbers on a spreadsheet that they moved around to something that basically added up. At no point do they actually appear to have talked to real life headteachers about the state of their budgets or the financial pressures.

This is why the attack line from the government was that the NEU lied to its members about the pay rise being not properly funded. Militant, rabble-rousing NEU.

They've been completely taken aback by the ASCL and NAHT also vehemently rejecting the pay rise. The DfE were bleating this morning that the NAHT response was the 'sort of rhetoric' one might expect from the NEU, not headteachers.

That's because it's not rhetoric, it's a position grounded in reality. Unlike what the DfE have been putting out for years.

They have totally underestimated the impact this has had on the whole of the education profession.....because they never talk to them.

Well said @noblegiraffe

I've just been told by a relative that Leeds has not been doing this. Hoooge scandal.

They've been expecting schools to stump up the cash

That's interesting. I'd be very interested in knowing more. I have come across schools around me who have said the same but in their cases it was because they didn't understand the send budget. It could be that in Leeds or it could be that they're right.

It's not in the papers. I'm so cross about it I don't care about posting it here.

Relative has made a big fuss and there's some sort of inquiry going on.

I'm confused as to how they've been able to get away with it tbh.

I'm struggling with this one. The position of "we're putting in £3bn more into education, so it's funded" sounds plausible. But I have no doubt that it isn't correct as I have much more faith in the people saying that it isn't funded than in the government. Can anyone explain why that £3bn isn't available to fund the pay rise?

It's not £3billion, it's £2.3 billion.

It's a bit of a saga. Last July, after the heads had finalised their budgets for September, the government unexpectedly announced that teachers would be getting a 5% pay rise in September. Headteachers had planned for about 3% as that was what the government had previously suggested.

There was to be no new funding for this 5% rise, so headteachers had to suddenly adjust their budgets to account for it. Planned building projects were cancelled, IT equipment not ordered, support staff hours cut or made redundant.

In the meantime, inflation is going insane. Energy prices are going insane. Schools are going into deficit. Most of them are running out of money and the newspapers are printing stories like this:
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/oct/22/exclusive-90-of-uk-schools-will-go-bust-next-year-heads-warn

So, in the Autumn statement in Nov 2022, heads are rather relieved to hear that there will be an additional £2.3 billion for schools.

Catch - they won't be getting it till September 2023. It will do nothing to fill the current deficits. But maybe next year they could do those urgent building works, buy that IT equipment, hire a librarian. Or just stay afloat. There is a lot of discontent on twitter about how the money is needed NOW, not in the future.

Fast-forward to present day. Gillian Keegan is offering a 4.5% pay rise to teachers for next year. 0.5% of this will be paid for with new money. The other 4% is not new money. It is supposed to come out of the £2.3 billion that was promised back in November 2022.

But that £2.3 billion was awarded because budgets were in a terrible state last year, not because they thought they wanted to give teachers a particular pay rise next year. It's double counting. It's money that heads desperately needed for other things. The DfE were looking on it as 'spare money', when it very much isn't.

Even with all that, the DfE admit that schools would only be able to afford the 4.5% next year on average. So some schools would be able to, if their finances were already ok. Schools with holes in the budget won't. Schools which have a large number of support staff (e.g. special schools) definitely won't be able to afford it because the DfE calculations about what to do with the £2.3 billion also include paying for a support staff pay rise, which only works if you have the average number of TAs.

So the DfE are telling heads that it's affordable because their rough spreadsheet which has £2.3 billion as 'spare cash' looks fine. Heads are looking at their own finances and are saying 'wtf'.

And the headteacher unions have both overwhelmingly voted to reject the offer. They're the ones who know whether it's affordable or not.

MrsMurphyIWish
0.5% was to be funded only, rest would be out of current budgets

Schools were given a 'surprise' boost in funding in the Autumn Statement;
https://schoolsweek.co.uk/autumn-statement-2-3-billion-extra-for-schools/

From what I understand, the allocations will be published in May - so not yet in 'current budgets'? In addition - extra funding is being provided to cover the 0.5% referred to in your post.

Cross post.

Yes, mine is better than yours.

They’re not funding it Clav no matter how many copy and paste links you post