To ask what budget cuts your schools are making?

[GoldenRetriever4]

So DS3 is in year 4 at a large state school in quite a leafy area. A letter from the head cane home yesterday talking about the school’s challenging budget situation due to a combination of inflation, teacher pay rises and government funding freeze.

Basically, the situation is now so severe that a lot of cuts are going to come in from September. A lot of staff are going- the school office is going from 4 staff to 1 and TAs are being cut to statutory minimum with 5 being cut. The school kitchen will be closing and meals will be prepared from frozen by staff on a rota basis.

School trips are being slashed and they are also talking about reducing cleaning staff. The upshot is that teachers will be expected to pick up a lot more slack with admin and support tasks.

Is this normal now for state schools? Are your schools doing similar?

So who would you suggest teaches the class if they cut teachers instead...

But you have to have teachers.

In my school gone from a healthy budget to running a deficit in 2 years.

Classes merging and bigger
Lost Asst Head
Deputies all doing more teaching time to cover PP
Reduced TA
Reduced admin
Slashed curriculum resources

No proactive maintenance and if anything breaks we’ll be begging to the Council. LA school.

This is the reason why many teachers are striking, but the media etc refuse to acknowledge it and just go on about pay. This then means that more and more people bash them because they think they are greedy striking for pay and don’t deserve it because they have tons of holiday. 🙄

@Pinkflipflop85 I don't understand your point? My point was cutting a TA or a cleaner is not going to have much impact on a schools budget.

Besides I thought some schools were using TAs to teach as that was cheaper...

But you have to have teachers.

Why would you think i'm not aware of this? However as I just said I thought schools were cutting teacher numbers eg using more TAs, merging classes, bigger classes etc which others have mentioned on the thread...

But when the government announce an unfounded pay rise for teaching staff the money has to come from somewhere. In a secondary school this often means not replacing teachers who leave and plugging the gaps with staff from other departments, but that’s not really doable in a primary.

Kent county Council annoyed that they were 147 million over budget for SEN education last year, the government have paid off 140 million of that but the Kent schools now are £7 million down for next year.

This was meant as a reply to @curtainsfringe

Because nearly half the classes in primary schools are limited in size by law so can't be increased. But our KS2 classes are now all over 30 and mixed age as we can't afford another teacher to even things out.

It’s interesting to hear what’s going on elsewhere. Our school have said protecting core areas is the top priority so ancillary areas are being cut.

The school is large and has a head and 4 deputies who don’t teach, so I’d have thought this could have been an area for savings. The kitchen was only refurbished last year so it seems a waste that it’s now going to be just a microwave room!

@SafariAnimal I'm not sure why you think I don't understand school budgets?