All this "Tiny crammed school room" stuff

[palacegirl77]

Just wondering why we havent had the teachers unions on this in a big scale before. On nearly every thread I see on here we hear about teachers being in "Tiny, crammed rooms" no windows - sometimes no daylight - so many kids they cant walk without knocking into each other. Not enough cleaners, it not being sanitary, germs spreading like wildfire (wasnt this an issue before covid with other illnesses such as norovirus etc?) Why are so many teachers happy to work in such horrible conditions? Why arent parents told about how awful it is and why arent we all signing petitions and asking for schools to be rebuilt? Did it take this pandemic to wake us all up? Is it really that bad?

There is no money. Capital improvements tend to require a special ‘bid’ for funds. These are expensive to put together and always seem to be rejected (might get something desperately needed on appeal). If a bid to replace a falling to bits boiler is rejected there is no chance of getting a block rebuilt because numbers have been creeping up.

School toilets are usually an absolute disgrace by the way.

Oh and I think schools tend not to make a deal of it with parents as there isn’t seen as anything parents can do (other than vote differently)

I left teaching this year after thirteen years in secondary. The damage wrought to children’s education by Tory austerity is absolutely catastrophic. Overcrowded classrooms is one tiny part of it. I left because the helplessness of it all overwhelmed me. I couldn’t do any more to help a collapsing system.

Raise it on Mumsnet and you will be drowned out by the stampeding race to the bottom as posters fall over each other to tell you how much worse jobs are ‘in the real world’ without all those luxurious holidays.

I don’t want my kids in state secondary schools. I’ve seen too much. I’m dreading the day they attend, quite frankly, and if parents knew the half of it they would feel the same. All Tory education secretaries have wanted to do is destroy the unions, not improve education so they play into this huge media portrayal of teachers and teaching unions as a pampered, deluded enemy. After years of getting children outstanding results is core subject, I could not face any more.

Do parents really care that much though? Sadly I think a lot just claim ignorance especially in secondary. I do get it, they're busy themselves with their own issues but funding has been mentioned tons by unions in the last decade.

It's hard to get enough of them to care now about conditions when if the return goes poorly in September they'll be massively inconvenienced as a result. Trying to engage parents in normal time is very hard work.

Yes it is that bad it’s why I left secondary. I hated squeezing past hundreds of teenagers in crowds day in day out. I didn’t sign up for crowd control. I had to go.

One of local secondary schools has had to recently close a whole block as it is a huge health and safety risk, can't get additional funding and is now going to have to squeeze more pupils into the other blocks whilst they try and raise funding to sort the situation. That is going to help social distancing when the school opens again in September.

All parents get to go round schools when choosing them, so surely they look at corridor width, window openings, size of classrooms and how many desks are crammed in? It is obvious the state of schools.

Who can teachers complain to though? The Unions are seen as demanding troublemakers, teachers are seen as lazy and on holiday half the year, who will listen? The teachers don’t want to complain to parents because I think there’s a mentality in schools not to rock the boat, they don’t want parents thinking it’s a ‘bad school’ and sending their kids elsewhere - if schools don’t fill their roll they get less money - but same overheads - it’s a vicious circle.
There’s endless threads on MN from parents determined to get their ‘high achiever’ into the best school possible and how they couldn’t possibly go to the local school. Fully comprehensive education is all very well unless it’s your own child, it seems.....

I also think PFI has a lot to answer for, my DS is at a PFI school built about 10 years old and when there’s a lot of rain they have buckets to catch the leaks 🙁

I think many parents care, but they do t think anything can be done.

I really care but don't see what can be done! I just try to.mitigate as much as possible for my kids and send ranty letters to my MP!

@Cloudburstagain

All parents get to go round schools when choosing them, so surely they look at corridor width, window openings, size of classrooms and how many desks are crammed in? It is obvious the state of schools.

I don't think it's so obvious when school is empty.

Some families don't really have a choice where there child goes though do they.

In fairness I chose a Primary School that had quite ropey classrooms for DS, everything else fitted the bill for him and we were told that the school were bidding for funding to get a new school building. Little did I know that it would take until he was in Y6 for that funding to come to fruition

I mean if I was living in a 10 year old house and had buckets to catch the rain I would be demanding the building company sort it! But with PFI who is responsible?

I'm in Lincolnshire, which is generally socially deprived. It's rural, no infrastructure, no motorways, little industry and mostly minimum wage and seasonal employment. Here's the info from the school cuts website on my county:-

Impact in Lincolnshire
After years of Government cuts, 228 of 331 schools in Lincolnshire are still in crisis.

-£19.7M
Shortfall in 2020
-£195
Per-pupil loss

I genuinely don't know how any parent doesn't realise that schools and education are in crisis and short of money. All the kids know. They know we haven't a textbook each. They know the windows don't open and they are all crammed into a tiny classroom. They know they have a class over over 30 - and that A level classes are twice the size they should be. I could go on...

I taught for many years in a school which was a listed building.

The original bit dated from the early C17th. Then the knackered sixties extension was somehow also listed because it was stuck to the side of the posh historical bit (prospectus cover photo always very carefully angled...). Then we had portakabins.

So it was Hobson's Choice - you either had:
a) dark, panelled classroom originally designed for 12 young Jacobean scholars, now holding 34 well nourished C21st teenagers (& heaven help you if the little gits carved their names into the 400 year old fitted desks).

b) breezeblocks, orange'n'olive hexagonal wallpaper, sinister leaks & rumours of asbestos in the book cupboard

c) a sweaty/freezing caravan with a gently listing floor which made everyone feel slightly seasick, & the delicate aroma of poisoned rats' decaying corpses wafting up from beneath.

Incidentally, this was the most successful & over subscribed school in town.

Why arent parents told about how awful it is and why arent we all signing petitions and asking for schools to be rebuilt?

Haha. Our (architecturally important and award winning) 1950’s built school has, over the last, roughly 30 years (so successive governments) been allowed to degrade to such an extent through neglect, that some parts became unsafe to use. It has ample science labs, art rooms, music hall, gym, sports hall and all other necessary classrooms. Plenty of outside space, large opening windows and wide corridors. Any money spent on things that gradually started to go kaput was just small amounts plugging gaps, like rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic. I think when funding for a new build was finally granted about three years ago, we were literally structurally the worst school in the country still in use and desperately needed something done ASAP as the windows couldn’t close and or open, no heating in some parts, roof leaking all over the place etc etc. The building is well loved and admired and, despite having RIBA involved in petitioning for the government for money to improve and preserve the building, and despite the fact it would have cost less to renovate than to demolish and rebuild, the government would not allow it. In fact they specifically said funding for a new building would be withdrawn if the Head continued to try and save the building. So, soon our children will return to the new build. With nowhere near the amount of labs, music and sport provision and with corridors so narrow that there is no longer any room for lockers in them. Apparently there are rules on the sizing of rooms, corridors etc and our children had been ‘spoilt’ for too long in the 1950’s proportioned building. Social distancing would have been very much achievable in the old building, it’ll be impossible in the new one.

It's not usually a matter of life and long term health issues/death.

It's often a cause of behaviour management difficulties, low progress rates, inability to find spaces to provide interventions, and that's what teachers and unions are always moaning about but everyone ignores us and we learnt to accept the status quo and deal with it. Like we carry on regardless through a lot of things other professions wouldn't accept.

The pandemic has opened my eyes to how large our class sizes are in comparison to the rest of the world!

There was the Labour building schools for the future programme that aimed to team good architecture and schools and provide a lot of jobs while tackling issues of space and rooms but the tories knocked it on the head with the austerity hammer.

Its been like this for years.
At primary many parents see the classrooms at drop off or collection, or parents evening - but probably don't seem them when they have 30 children in, with 2 or 3 staff members I guess.

My computer room - where I am based most of the time - is actually not too bad a size. But it is like a furnace in the summer. I have 4 or 5 very small windows (ones right at the top) which open a small amount. In the winter - as 1.5 walls are glass - it is really cold at times.

Very few of our classrooms have big windows which open. Most just have the small rectangle bit at the top of a window which opens. The rooms are either too hot or too cold.

Our two newest classrooms - which are cabins in the playground, replaced the very old asbestos ones a few years back - they are bigger and have bigger opening windows. However the roof in both classes leak - this is hoping to be fixed again this summer. And in winter they are really cold.

And actually, further to the above post, RIBA are involved in schools a lot. There's lots of research around best learning environments etc.

Tories aren't interested.

And having children sharing 3 to a double desk is normally manageable in year 1 if not ideal. In recption we don't actually have enough tables and chairs to seat every child as that isn't how reception normally works.

Because like all other council services, no one cares until something awful happens. People in Britain wouldn’t vote for paying more taxes, and all services are massively underfunded. Spend one day working in mental health (or schools, or hospitals etc etc) and you’d be amazed just how much is feels like walking a tightrope, looking at a ticking time bomb and waiting for something disastrous to happen where there’s a scandal/crisis. Only then, when the public are clamouring for reform, does anything get done. Teachers, much like HCP’s are too busy fire fighting through the system as it stands, to give any energy to shouting about the state of things when it falls on deaf ears anyway.

OK so just to be clear, this wasnt a thread criticising teachers for not doing more and I hope it didnt come across like that. I have been into my kids classrooms. They are perfectly big enough (the one in Y2 I guess had more space to free roam) and the one just finished in y6 had quite a new classroom which fitted the children in 6 to a table with lots of space around. So maybe I am incredibly blinkered and lucky which is why I was asking I guess. I will certainly be looking at some of those links and will happily email my MP with concerns (however honestly, I have no concerns about the school where my kids go and as weve only just moved from 2 to 3 form intake actually each class only has 25 kids and its a large site. So I agree I need to look at other places but in my defence yes the only experience I have is my kids school which appears to be fine, never spoken about underfunding or lack of resources and my 2 SILs who are at different schools but again seem to love it and have no concerns. I know a few people mentioned other pages on MN to reiterate I dont really use it that much - maybe this pandemic will have one tiny positive moving forward that some schools arent fit for purpose and stoke some action from parents/unions? I hope so.

We tend not to say to parents “it’s crap here, you know” because we don’t want them to vote with their feet.

-£380,067
Shortfall in 2020
-£347
Per-pupil loss

We don't have every building open on open evening. People see the shiny new bits.

@HipTightOnions

We tend not to say to parents “it’s crap here, you know” because we don’t want them to vote with their feet.

And that's part of the problem - schools sound like they've learnt from estate agents sometimes, so much gloss!