Teacherless classrooms with kids running amok in schools buildings that are crumbling

[noblegiraffe]

....that's where we're at in education, after 13 years of Conservative rule.

Ed Dorrell thinks that the state of schools could be a big election issue.

I fucking hope so.

https://capx.co/could-the-looming-schools-crisis-become-a-big-election-issue/

A secondary school I know has a large part of the site condemned so can’t be used. Other parts of the school are heading that way. It’s finally been granted money from DfE building scheme. However, that is 10 year scheme and school doesn’t know where it fits in that 10 years. It is competing with other crumbling schools across the country. In the meantime they have to decide whether to have other parts of the site condemned and not have sufficient space for the students or use precious depleted school budget to patch up these buildings which will then be eventually demolished once the building scheme starts. It is ridiculous.

Our local MP is currently campaigning for a local secondary school to be renovated after parts of the sports hall actually fell off. In York there have been two new schools built but the existing ones have had no improvements in decades.

DS’s Primary school had temporary classrooms that had been there for over 50 years. It was only when none of them were really usable that a new building was finally commissioned

I used to work in a university and one of the departmental noticeboards had a poster up reading 'The plural of anecdote is not data'. Threads like these always suffer from individual posters saying 'Well, I've never seen that, so it can't be happening anywhere'. Must be very wearing for those who are seeing the problems of state education in real time.

I believe all the stuff teachers say here about the state sector. Which is why so many are now choosing private for their kids. I know it too will be affected by the recruitment crisis but for now, the many private options we have around us provide much greater security for worried parents. A great state school is now a lucky luxury rather than something we can take for granted. And that’s the fault of the government not teachers.

That's your takeaway from the article? 😄

What is relevant is that we have had 13 years of chronic under investment in education; a right wing media constantly undermining teachers, the value of education, anyone with a different opinion to the tory govt, anyone at university; a majority of the workforce who are just too up against it trying to stay afloat to protest/volunteer/afford private. Added to which our education system seems designed to discourage critical thinking and isn't even trying to produce a half decent workforce.

The whole thing is an utter shambles and needs to be torn down and rebuilt from scratch by people who actually know what they are doing. It should be a cross-party responsibility not confined to central govt. We're already seeing the results of lack of NHS reform and investment and its bloody terrifying. There is a time lag with education:workforce but its coming and its going to be equally bad.

My school is one of the best in the county. Massively oversubscribed. Just in my dept alone we are short three full teachers for Sept as people are leaving teaching and we've not been able to recruit enough replacements. No idea who'll be teaching those groups

Its true that the school isn't falling down. It was rebuilt on the cheap by a private company that the school has to rent the buildings from. We have "invacuation" alarms for when it gets windy as sometimes bits of the building blow off....

During recent storms my ds's primary school roof collapsed. There are rooms they are unable to use now as a result. The PTA is fundraising to get it fixed, because there doesn't seem to be any money coming from anywhere else to fix it. That's not the role of the PTA, but bless them, they are doing it anyway. The same school has announced that more than half of its teaching assistants and lunch time staff are being let go at the end of the school year, and not replaced. They also have a combined year one/two class due to teacher shortages and low pupil numbers.

Schools are in crisis. Teachers are doing their best, with limited resources and constantly increasing expectations. Our children, teachers and school staff deserve better. If school conditions and education funding is not a central issue in the next election then all of our political parties have totally lost touch with the general public and what is important to them.

It never fails to surprise me that some people are saying school staff are incorrect when they pop into a school once in a while.

Anyone visiting my classroom would think all is well. However, the door collapsed on me twice, there is black mould on the ceiling, the curtain rail collapsed on a child and three windows are cracked.

Visitors generally don't get told these things as they are focused on their visit.

it doesn't mean that all buildings are crumbling and falling down

in a civilised, first world society, you would hope that no child was being taught in a building that is crumbling and falling down. It's not acceptable that there are buildings considered to be at risk of collapse. But there are - you really don't need to go very far to find that information. Sure, it's not all schools. But one is one too many. And god forbid, one should crumble whilst children are in it.

I mean, what you would really expect in a first world civilised society is someone with an eye on public buildings and a rolling inventory of some kind that replaces before they come to the end of their useful life. It may be that some buildings can go on longer than anticipated but it is clear a huge number of 1960/1970s buildings are no longer fit for purpose.

I'm a supply teacher, and have been for nearly 5 years.

Nowadays, I no longer surprised to arrive at a school to hear I'm covering Miss X, who is off more than the rest of the staff put together.
Of the 3 schools I visit most recently, 8 times out of 10 it's to cover the same teacher each time, who is off ill.

My friend's DD is in Year 6 and got a teacher who was new to the school in September. That teacher has had 2 long periods of absence, and then a phased return each time. Apparently, the kids feel like she's away more than she's in. And when she's off, the deputy head has to sit in the class, with the supply teacher teaching, because the class are so badly behaved when the usual teacher is off.

I'm on mat leave too. School was unable to recruit a maternity cover so they've resorted to a mixture of re-timetabling, cover supervisors and external cover. Shambles.

I’ve posted on MN before about how my school was unable to get subject specialists to teach A-level so Y13s were left teaching themselves the course from textbooks for months.

The send provision is on its knees and all the schools in my affluent town look very bedraggled so yes I agree OP

I would go so far as to say this is the most brilliant summing up of the situation. 👏👏Very sadly. Education has become a political football. (How do we get our voices heard more powerfully on this? )

And yet, after more than 20 years of teaching, there is still so much that is good and noble about it but I am in a school that has far fewer issues than OP describes though who knows in 10 years time?

There are many good people in the education sector; those people need to grow in confidence and power, while the ones who are in It for self-aggrandising, may they get their comeuppance and fade away. That is my hope.

They came to patch up where the bricks had fallen from the roof edge, luckily no one was below when they did. They told us not to worry about the crack in the brickwork that runs from roof height to floor level, it's fine apparently. Oh and just because the rain comes through the roof straight into the library is no cause for concern either, we just need to place buckets in the right place!

@spanieleyes I think local schools have spent more on buckets than on books this year due to leaking roofs

Let's not forget that the conservatives have not only allowed schools to get to a dangerous state, but they voted down a motion to name the schools.

• 7,158 schools in England contain at least one building component, such as a roof, door or light fittings, deemed to be “life expired and/or at serious risk of imminent failure”;
• Almost nine in 10 schools have at least one building component that has a “major defect” or is “not operating as intended”.

Overall, more than 240,000 fixtures and fittings were found to be defective.
However, the Government has still refused to confirm which schools in the country have these defects and today voted to keep the names concealed despite a previous pledge to publish the data in full.

https://www.fenews.co.uk/social-impact/conservative-mps-vote-to-cover-up-dangerous-school-buildings/

Of course they won't name them. Imagine if they did - as soon as parents found out their child was in a school at risk of collapse there would be instant uproar and they would be clamouring for the school to be repaired immediately.

As it stands parents are blissfully unaware and assume that their kids are safe.

I'm a parent as well as a teacher. If I new my kids school was at risk of collapse I would be taking them elsewhere. As would ever other parent I think.

*knew. I can spell I promise.

People just don't want to hear or believe this. They'd rather pretend that everything is fine and it's just teachers moaning. 'My school is fine, so it's obviously not true' Yes, the school I teach in is fine too (because it's the only girls' grammar in the area, it's lovely, and you'd be mad not to want to work there). But that doesn't make all of this untrue, I'm afraid.

@noblegiraffe

I completely agree with you.

I wonder if @mumsnet would pick this up and represent us concerned parents in some sort of campaign.

I teach a shortage subject and recently upped my hours temporarily to cover an absent colleagues A-level class on my day off in the run up to their exams as it worked with my timetable and I needed the money. They were utterly pathetically grateful to me as they’d had multiple different teachers for a full term, the most consistent lady they had was an Art teacher who knew nothing about Chemistry. Children should not feel grateful that they have a subject specialist, it should be the bare minimum they expect from their education and we are falling so far short of that nationally.

And we also have a building with many issues that desperately needs air conditioning quite frankly! Just because it was good enough when we were kids doesn’t mean it’s good enough now the times have moved on.