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?

We have cut pretty much every TA that doesn’t come with additional EHCP funding-so we will have no interventions, no boosters etc unless they can be run by the class teacher within the class. The DH has also lost his leadership day out of class. We had plans to repair toilets, basins and ceilings which are smelly/leaking/broken but those have been shelved. No trips during the summer term.

We still aren’t breaking even though and are about £30k down. We are a small primary with one teacher per class so there is nobody floating to cut. I guess the next thing will be teacher redundancy and replacing them with a TA/HLTA/supply? Which year group shouldn’t get a teacher though-Reception, Year 1, Year 6?

VA schools receive funding only towards their buildings, not ongoing monies into general budgets.

So when we needed an extension in 2000 they paid 10%.

No other money into budgets for any other reason.

I’ve just seen a Head post this on Twitter-information in from the LA about energy costs which will probably mean schools redoing budgets yet again. More staffing losses coming, I would imagine.

We need rid of the Conservatives. They have bled this Country dry to line their own pockets.

Do you think Labour will be able to sort out all the issues in Education?

Well said. I find it especially grating when the sections of the media that speak loudest about the harms of lockdown on kids are somehow content for kids and teachers to carry on in this underfunded shitshow - and as long as kids are in school, it doesn't matter. Teachers leaving? Doesn't matter. Unfunded payrise? Doesn't matter. Regular letters for soap, tissues, funding other kids lunches - don't matter. They then claim to speak on behalf of how important kids' education is - but only in relation to lockdown.

Probably not but they will sort some at least. There's a lot needs doing after 13 years of Tories.

Your post really brings home the reality of it @Shinyandnew1

The teachers need to understand that there is no magic money tree.If they want a payrise there will be fewer of them

The public need to understand that we don’t have enough teachers, children are in classes without teachers and the situation is getting worse and worse.

I assume you don’t have children in state education if that doesn’t concern you.

I think one of the reasons the proposed unfunded pay deal was said to be affordable is because a number of trusts have reserves.

Even if a trust has reserves, using them requires a current year deficit. You then get pounced on for not having a balanced in year budget. Also as you can never assume future funding increases (but have to assume pay increases) the three year budget deficits grow and grow so now the reserves are gone. So you have to show recovery - but the only way to realistically do that is to cut staff, that takes time so you have to do that now.

eventually (hopefully) additional funding will be announced, by which time you will have cut everything to the bone, laid off the librarian, the assistant senco, intervention staff and will have replaced UPS retirees with ECTs (if you are lucky). You wont have spent anything on capital improvements, equipment or repairs for several years. Ie it is too late, years of childrens education will be damaged. And the money still won’t be enough as there will be a bundle of new requirements you will need to fund and it won’t take into account the real inflation rates. Plus you need to start building up reserves for the next time this happens…

it also means the reserves aren’t available for the things like IT upgrades, boiler repairs, mending the fridge, replacing the dangerous window frames etc.

and that is for the trusts with reserves…

Formally linking school funding to inflation, or even to wage increases, would really really help take away some of the roller coaster

As charities Trusts are meant to keep a certain level of reserves as recommended by DfE and then the DfE tell them to spend said reserves!

Oh dear, have you not learnt anything?

1. There is a magic money tree, but only for friends of the government.
2. There could be enough for payrises if the government hadn't given billions to their mates for nothing and if they got their mates to pay their taxes
3. Brexit. Nuff said.

Williamson's wife was a teacher.

Keegan's niece is the one who she tried to use to prove teachers were well paid and messed up and obfuscated.

Do we know when the NASUWT are announcing their ballot results -obvs at conference, but when?

Yes, and I wonder when Gav’s wife last taught in a state school classroom…!

I don't know when she gave up teaching. To be fair, she was a TA in a state primary during the pandemic. Awkward chit chat around all those coffee machines Jenny Harries claimed schools have, no doubt.

And, apologies, it's Keegan's cousin, not niece and this is what she said

My cousin has just started teaching and she is on £28,000. She is 23 and lives in Knowsley (Merseyside). She is single and lives with her mum and dad but the reality is that she is in a good career, it’s probably within the top 10% of earners in some parts of the country.”

Rather a lot of factors at play there, Gillian!

I love 'probably' and 'some' doing all the heavy lifting.

I’m probably considered to be the epitome of perfection in some parts of the country … aka my house (and immediately after giving my children chocolate).

Well the £8 billion on portraits of the king could have been scrapped in the gov is so short of money for a start.

I assume you don’t currently have kids in the state sector education else you’d know how bad it is.

At my son’s primary the PTA ask each class teacher what supplies they’d like for that year and then we have a week drive to provide as much as we can for them. That shouldn’t even be a thing.

Then the public need to accept increasingly low standards in their children’s education. Maybe parents can pre teach topics at home and non qualified staff can simply test students. Or maybe we can cram 100+ students into a hall and lecture them - SEND needs be damned. Or let’s go back to online learning. Who gives a fuck that progress was impacted. At least children are occupied, right?

Teacher salarys have failed to keep pace with inflation since 2011. Studies have shown that the only other profession to have also been treated so badly are social workers. We are professionals and want to provide students with the best education possible. We aren’t asking for a money tree - education and health care should be the best funded services in the country. The only well funded service in the country right now is the one funnelling money into Tory pockets and that of their donors.

Yes, and I wonder when Gav’s wife last taught in a state school classroom…!

Early 2000s, I believe.

The teachers need to understand that there is no magic money tree.If they want a payrise there will be fewer of them

So why has oak National been given several million and set up as a public body?

People don't seem to understand that the U.K. has the second highest number of teachers to pupils in the world too.

Most of Europe and the US has somewhere between class sizes of 15-20.

We are 30 and sometimes plus.

We penny pinch as it is.

Postapocalyptic, this has happened to us; DC, whose EHCP specifies a certain amount of support, is unable to have said support as school can not recruit TAs. This in turn has led to difficulties in accessing aspects of school life in direct relation to DC's SEN. I'm a teacher, so I know exactly what DC's school is wrestling with in terms of trying to find staff to do a very demanding job on the peanuts wages they are able to offer due to insufficient budgets. It's sad and infuriating in equal measure.

Digeridoo, most headteachers don't singlehandedly manage the budget -they usually have a very savvy school business manager (yes, even the smallest schools) and allocated governors with whom to share the overview and strategic budgeting. The allocated budget is what it is and has nothing to do with individual headteachers' backbones; they can 'stand up' all they like but it won't change the funding formulae applied by their local authority.

Schools would love to hang on to experienced, more senior teachers, but as we become increasingly expensive and there is no provision in school budgets to enable, let alone incentivise, school leadership to keep or recruit experienced staff. Once at the top of the pay spine, you become a financial liability to your school. Schools recruit cheap, less experienced teachers as a result, or do not replace retiring or leaving teachers at all. My school is unusual in that we have a high proportion of 'expensive' experienced teachers, and as such, our budget suffers.

And the thing is, the pay progression in teaching covers a relatively small span. It is nothing like in other professions where incremental increases are in the several thousands between rises. I was checking my pay progression over the last 20 years the other day: an increase of £940 here, £1200 there, nothing for a few years, and it's crept up in comparatively small dribs and drabs up to my current modest salary, and every step has had to have a rigorous evidence base to support it.

But if you want to stem the haemorrhaging of teachers and headteachers leaving the profession, workload is the thing to double down on.

Being a TA is no longer affordable for many.

Increasingly, older experienced tas are leaving our SEND school.

They used to get a send allowance- a little more money - but that was taken away about 10-12 years ago. A slap in the face as teachers in send schools do still get this.

The whole system is collapsing.,