To question school spending £20000 on event space in school car park…

[OrangeCrushing]

It’s an infants school, just set back from busy main road.

No gates.
Random cars regularly use car park to do 3 point turn.
Car park always full and then dubious parking.

Shed to one side (close to car park entrance) has been turned into an event space.

It’s not huge, maybe 10/15 children. But no outside space, and if door is open you wouldn’t want a child going outside into car park/near the main road without close supervision by an adult.

Think idea is to hire it out to generate more money for school.

I’ve been told that school can’t afford reading books/library books changed. So children get the same reading book 6 times or for two weeks in a row. Library is rarely used.
Money raised for event space has been raised by PTA, who are amazing and very well meaning.
However, I honestly don’t think we are going to see lots of new reading books, someone helping with library as a result.

It feels like the priorities are wrong?
I would have focused on securing the car park with gates first, ensuring reading resources are adequate - and then gradually putting additional funding towards the event space…

If you dislike the school that much then move your child?
Im also completely confused by your post. An “event space” or glorified shed does not cost £20k. And do you mean the entire school has 10/15 children? If so then I imagine they are really struggling.
How on earth has a PTA of a school with that small numbers managed to fund a £20k “event space”.
Im a TA in a small Infant school. We are on our knees in terms of money. We are now having to go to consultation for the 3rd year in a row to try to keep our jobs. We have no pens, glue sticks, and lots of other essentials.
In terms of complaining about a library, do you mean actual scheme reading books? If so then a lot of schools follow a phonics scheme which supports fluency so they would need to read each book many times (we read 3x a week at school then send them home). That’s the role of a TA though and not a librarian. If it’s a library book then as long as the child has access to books at home does it really matter if they aren’t changed frequently? It’s a huge task to change ours as they all have to be logged in and out and quite honestly I’m sure the parents would rather I be in class supporting their child than spending an hour sorting out library books.

I understand you are frustrated but you genuinely seem to dislike the school, its location near a road, the PTA and all the staff so why is your child there?

@Notimeforit

In terms of non-teaching senior leaders. One is a SENCO. I think actually my annoyance is more to do with this.
My son has an EHCP, he is v quiet but can keep pace and is happy.

The SENCO tried to place him as ‘cannot meet needs’ before he started.
The SENCO didn’t realise his amended EHCP wasn’t in place so it took 8 months to sort this out (should lawfully have happened 7months ago).
The SENCO has wildly overstated his provision to get funding.

The SENCO thought he had been discharged from speech services when he has not.

My questions would be:

• what is the expected payback period? Very few schools make a lot of money through hiring out facilities. The majority that do hire out 3G football pitches. £15/£20 an hour is roughly tha going rate for a classroom near me. It takes a lot to payback £22k plus.
• Due to issues with the car park and lack of secure fencing it doesn’t sound as though it is a safe space for children to use during the day so doesn’t benefit the children whilst at school.
• What size school is it? Rough benchmarks are for a one form entry there is a non reaching Head, teaching Deputy Head with additional time out off the classroom and SENCO role but it does depend on the school. If there are a lot of children requiring additional support I would expect more time out of class for whoever does the SENCO role or the catchment may need more support for children for other reasons.
• A TA should not be covering a class, unless they are an HlLTA or a teacher working as a TA (should be paid at teaching rates) unless it’s an emergency.
• Another question would be what are the other things that a school could spend £22k on? Investment in IT (interactive boards, laptops, iPads, new server), investment in the playground, investment in the buildings etc etc

On the face of it, it sounds an idiotic decision but there may be other factors we don’t know about.

@mrsconradfisher

Similarly my voluntary organisation has minimal funds. No glue sticks, but we put the children first. When I first taught there was a blackboard, barely any computers. No TA’s. The children came first.

I meant the event space could fit about 10/15 children. It’s the size of a shed/garage. It definitely cost at least £22000.

@BridasShieldWall

Thank you that’s v helpful.

Don’t ‘shut’ up but inform yourself properly so you do understand. Go to the PTA meetings and ask questions and put forward your view or ideas. Ask to see the minutes of the meeting where this decision was made, or just talk to the PTA chair. If the question is around how school funds are spent, look at their accounts, if they’re not clear, write to the chair of the board of governors - and ask questions rather than criticise, until you are 100% sure you have got it right.

The bit about school not affording books but can build this….

it will come from very different sources.
School budgets are often very strictly controlled, with funding raised or awarded for specific reasons.

We have spent money on certain things that might seem non-essential to some onlookers. But that money was awarded for a given reason. We weren’t allowed to change what it was spent on.

If the PTA have contributed a large part of the funding for this building they must have explained previously during fundraising campaigns what this money was going towards

Presumably several people have put a lot of work into this and you aren’t required to donate to it. If you aren’t personally funding it, I would let them crack on. Far more expensive and stupid decisions are made all the time using public money.

Your thoughts on salaries and the roles of the teaching staff are a bit much as you don’t even work in the school and don’t have any involvement in running it. You probably don’t think in this detail about the wages and roles in other institutions that you come across, such as your GP or dentist.

You will inevitably upset people if you criticise the project and it probably isn’t worth the aggro. I would just buy some good reading books for my child and leave them to it.

That might be the topic for another thread?

Lots of academies and bigger schools have several non teaching SLT members-is one the SENCo? You've said this is an infant school but that doesn't necessarily mean it's small. We have. 5-form intake infant school near us!

My god definitely some very defensive school governors here!!
I agree with OP! £22k for a shed?!! And no books, it all sounds very dodgy to me. I’d even say sounds like someone is pocketing from it somewhere.

Also if you e any concerns you can make an anonymous complaint to Ofsted who will investigate and turn up unannounced

No problem. I work in finance with schools and my Heads would prioritise the reading scheme or other investments that DIRECTLY benefit the children. If any of them suggested something like this it would be closely scrutinised and unless it is is an exceptional area this shed won’t raise much in rental income. Unless there is something significant missing in terms of information I think this is a very poor investment. I am very conscious working in the public sector that we are spending public money raised through taxes and it is incumbent on us to spend these funds wisely and for the purposes for which they were given.

I think a teacher’s job can be summed up, in part, as explaining difficult concepts/facts to those who don’t understand them. That is a skill in itself.

If they cannot explain something to a parent in terms that make sense to the parent , then there is a good chance they are not good at explaining rather than that parent being stupid.

But to be fair, in the scenario you have described, they probably don’t understand the situation themselves because it seems they are hoping to use the shed as a business if they intend to hire it out to Slimmer’s World or similar. Do any of them have any business qualifications? Perhaps more importantly do they have planning permission to erect a shed for business purposes? Given the health and safety issues you have raised, I suspect not.

Unfortunately, this kind of thing will occur as long as people who are not trained as educators are expected to also be equipped to run businesses. The real puzzle is why they believe they can.

@Alwaysinamood not sure OFSTED would

This is a separate issue which may be clouding your perspective on the shed issue.

How big is the school? Having two non teaching members of SLT is absolutely standard, especially as one is the head and one is the SENDCO. I work with lots of schools and would be surprised that this was all they had unless it was a tiny school. The sendco will either be part time or will be PT sendco/pt teaching even if that's PPA cover or running interventions, unless it's a massive school.

If you have concerns over how the school are using the EHCP funding or how they are meeting the outcomes for your child you need to call the case work officer and talk to them for advice. You also need to challenge this in an EHCP review where it is written on the form how they are spending the funding.

Not for one parental complaint they won't! Unless it's a huge safeguarding concern.

Complaint about a school needs to go to chair of governors first.

@Lurkingandlearning OP says they got planning permission. Did people ask the school about the project when the planning notice went up?

A school governor? With a dismissive attitude like that?

I think many people have a huge misunderstanding of the powers/influence that Ofsted have. So many times on threads about schools there is always someone who shouts out complain to Ofsted. The majority of times Ofsted will bat it back and check you have followed the school’s complaints procedures first

This won't help with the shed but you can look at your school finances on the financial benchmarking website and see how they compare to other schools.

https://financial-benchmarking-and-insights-tool.education.gov.uk/find-organisation

The shed project doesn't sound the best thought out from what you say. Unless they get a long term high paying let.

If the event space was paid for by the PTA, it's irrelevant to the issue of books, which should be funded by the school. If it is able to pay for non-teacher managers but not for books, it sounds like something is badly wrong with the management of its finances.

People do have a variety of interesting ideas don't they. My favourite experience, years ago as mine are adults now, was the school PTA having a big boost in fund raising. One of the dads went to college with a comedian who was very popular at the time, prime Saturday night show on BBC. He was doing a panto that year in our city and the dad asked him to come and open the Christmas Fayre. Well the school was packed, the queue outside was long and everyone paid to come in. That night we made more than double what was normally raised in a year.

How to spend all that money? Big meeting, school hall full of parents and the arguing started, computers, carpets so classrooms were quieter, books, play equipment and the one I loved was the mum who had calculated how many paper towels the school could afford, I think it worked out as one and a half towels per day per child and she wanted the money spent on paper towels.

Well the arguing went on and the meeting went on. Eventually I put my hand up to speak, there was a big disaster somewhere, famine children dying and I suggested as the money was causing so much upset we should donate it to the disaster fund. Stunned silence and then Head said yes if we couldn't agree soon that would be the best idea.

Eventually it was agreed to buy books and some play equipment and leave some for any emergency.

Money can cause problems, lack of it and spending it, and I don't think some parents ever forgave me for my suggestion but it did focus minds.

I hope the new "shed" does generate some money for years to come.

Well that’s a weird thing to say!

The reading scheme has changed this year so would need a one off injection of money to replace the existing books which is almost certainly less than the redundancy payment which would be due to the senior manager. So from a cash flow perspective, making the manager redundant doesn’t mean they can buy the books this year anyway.

And then there is the issue of who will actually do the work the senior manager is going once they are made redundant?

Lots of assumptions being made by you about how the school is managing its finances based on very little information provided by a parent who has an axe to grind because she thinks one of the managers has not handled her SEN responsibilities to that poster’s child correctly - a personality issue which is completely unrelated to how the headteacher, finance committee of the governing body and the PTA manage the budget.