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?

People don’t care because they don’t think it affects them - until it does.
Last election I joined every local Facebook group I could find to push awareness of school funding cuts (I’m in a very Tory area) nobody gave a shit, not interested, didn’t care. This year several of our local very good secondaries have said parents need to buy the text books Because kids can’t share at the moment & school don’t have the money to buy the number they would need.
Parents are up in arms now, suddenly it’s a big deal that the school hasn’t got enough money - too bloody late. For every parent that voted for this govt just to save a few quid in tax a year - I’m glad you’re going to have to fund the books & all the extras - serves you bloody right (I’m not a teacher btw)

Agree with previous posters.

Been teaching 29 years. First school average class size was 28 for top set, 8 for SEN. Not it’s is 33 for top set, 20 for SEN.

Used to have own classroom so could use non contract time to mark etc, now it is a shared classroom, no work spaces.

Used to provide pupils with their copies of their texts to annotate, now we loan them and they make notes in booklets that they ultimately lose.

Used to have more than 10% PPA so could offer mentoring programmes etc, now have just my PPA and it isn’t blocked so have half hour here and there.

Have been in strike 2 times (2 single days) in 20 years yet Unions have this villainous reputation.

I’m a secondary but in my children’s PTA for their primary. We raise so much money to cover school budgets.

If and definitely it’s a fine line between saying on Open Evening ‘we are fab teachers who will do our ultimate best for your children’ and also saying ‘the building they are in is falling to pieces and they won’t have much one on one time as they are one of hundreds’.

Been teaching 20 years!

It's clear that my children's primary school is straining at the seams. However, another reason that bugs spread so fast is that kids get sent to school ill. For the most part, this is because parents have to work. Their employers have policies such as disciplinary measures after x number of absences or inflexibility in working hours that mean they can't afford not to send their children in. The whole system needs to change, not just schools.

@MrsHamlet

-£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.

We are the same. We put arrows on the floor for parents to follow and turn out the lights; he have to hide them from the swastikas on the desks. We only use the new rooms, not the ones last improved in the 1960s. My room has frost on the inside of the windows in winter and part of the roof came off during bad weather and was fixed 12 weeks later; we just used buckets.

-£861,000
Shortfall in 2020
-£590
Per-pupil loss

We have been battered by the cuts.

Were you really unaware OP or has it just now occurred to you?

@NeurotrashWarrior

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!

Totally agree.

@NeurotrashWarrior

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.

Tories are in favour of academies.

I may be well off the mark but wasn't Cummings Goves advisor when he started making all the changes that caused all the original issues?

Now Cummings is Boris advisor. And the whole way education is being treated, the viterol they have managed to garner towards teachers and their unions and the way they seem to have swung press makes me suspicious that they are trying to divide and them conquer.

Eg a complete academy type school system with private investment and less state funding.

I may be entirely off the mark. But something isn't adding up.

Imo gov wont 'overspend' on anything - except themselves and non working IT
Tbh it is ridiculous healthcare is so bad my sister moved abroad so as not to have a baby here (labour care).
I thought it cant be that bad and it really was.
We have almost no infectious disease places. No separate rooms even.

Dc school has maybe 4 toilets for 60 kids. If you are lucky some year groups have less. The school is doubled in size and still almost 100% full! and that is just a change in the last 7y.
The hall is part of lunch room too. The places for coats etc are tiny.
I dont expect it's normally cleaned as in sterilised more obvious dirt removed. Several times kids have thrown up in class. Dc said in assembly someone did and they stayed sat there as some stuff was put on it.
Dc teacher maybe 50y was off at least a week maybe several with a cough feb time.
Yes the classrooms are tiny. With the desks the kids can hardly move from one side to the other.(and that room was builr for 30 maybe 5y ago.)
Have to say though nursery somewhere else was similar only a few toilets but of course they have constant access. But that also means few sinks..

Part of the problems can be kids losing stuff but parents not caring so piles of lost property.
Covid:
If the gov wont spend £1 per school for extra cleaning
Wont insist on bubbles of even 30 or less
Just say wash hands..
Wont even let teachers or kids wear their own masks.
Wont fund enough IT equipment for pupils to log on at home so meaning lots of s hools didnt do online lessons.
Go look at class sizes in the rest of the world.

Also across uk the gov thinks you can predict this years results by last years at the same school! That is shocking. We need to push for at least more equal provision in schools.
Eg dc school vs one down the road.
They have online reading books so would have been able to continue in lockdown. The amount kids are read with varies from once a term to teacher and maybe another 2 by ta to other s hool up to once a day.
Even something like allowing a CSA start LA and HT can say no (#postcode lottery)
Not to mention so many houses are being built cant get into the secondary. Who can say where we would get in in a few years time.

I think the thing that surprised me most is that they are paying up to £50 per family to a restaurant for EOTHO.

OTOH they have categorically states to schools there is no funding for the extra requirement required for Covid and cleaning etc and if any death happens in a school they will be investigated for liability.

Yes and yet the gov must be legally reponsibke for denying masks/face shield in writing. Stating ds must remove them.
And doing that while knowing shielding kids /teachers and parents. And fines!
Duty of care.
But asside from that it is costing a fortune for everyone. Killing off industries and yet they wont take steps to slow the spread. And 2 cases.

My dd's school. We've known for years how underfunded our state schools are. We've seen the horrible attitude on MN towards teachers when they voice their concerns about running the schools during a pandemic. Some people just prefer to put their fingers in their ears and stamp their foot demanding to get back to normal.

@itsgettingweird Not off the mark at all. Cummings was Gove’s advisor and I’ve been thinking much the same as you.

He held some controversial views at the time. He derided Sure Start and teachers and believed that children’s intelligence was linked to their genetics not their education. I remember finding the latter very bizzare and was quite shocked when he climbed his way back into power on recent years.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/11/genetics-teaching-gove-adviser.

From the article -“Cummings maintains that individual child performance is mainly based on genetics and a child's IQ rather than the quality of teaching. He says: "There is strong resistance across the political spectrum to accepting scientific evidence on genetics. Most of those that now dominate discussions on issues such as social mobility entirely ignore genetics and therefore their arguments are at best misleading and often worthless." He claims research shows that as much as 70% of a child's performance is genetically derived.“

So basically the rich do well because they have superior genes.

No wonder the A level algorithm disaster has happened.

2 to 3 form intake actually each class only has 25 kids

Next year there wont be enough money for 25 children to the class, then you'll be into really convoluted mixed age throughout the school, 32 kids in each.
Or you'll keep 25 kids to a class, but no TA support for that bottom lot who need support, or the child who walks out in every lesson after throwing a chair, but who doesnt pass the threshold for support or an ehcp.

And so on. Not pissing on chips, just reality.

Thanks for linking that article Bomber

I'm not a tin hat person at all but I'm very good at analysing and am often known for connecting dots others don't see!

Something just doesn't feel right.

But it's certainly interesting about the IQ thing because it then assumes a child with an intelligent parent on 6 figure salary will do well. Except the truth also is they often get much more nurturing in education through the independent system.

@itsgettingweird

This is exactly how I feel. It is a relief to know I’m not alone.

No vendetta, no tin hat, just concern for so many reasons unrelated to this thread that all seem to add up to something very odd.

The view about IQ is very short-sighted and elitist indeed. I can’t believe anyone things that way.

[quote Bombergirl]@itsgettingweird

This is exactly how I feel. It is a relief to know I’m not alone.

No vendetta, no tin hat, just concern for so many reasons unrelated to this thread that all seem to add up to something very odd.

The view about IQ is very short-sighted and elitist indeed. I can’t believe anyone things that way.[/quote]
It is a sinister view and deeply concerning is the influence Cummings has within the cabinet. He really does want to make sure we all stay in our boxes. I agree there is something not right. --Is he a sociopath?--

The other issue that hasn’t been mentioned is mobility. It’s a really big thing at the school I teach at. Every year at least 50% of our Y6s were not with us in reception as so many leave and so many join at all points through the year. I’m SLT and I’m forever enrolling.

Funding is based on the census. So on census day you may have 53 Y1 children. But a few weeks later you could have 58 and it takes a while for the funding to sort itself out again. It makes our budget unstable.

Also has a massive impact on progress and attainment but then the government doesn’t care about that. We are still judged the same for a child who has been with use since reception and one who joined a month before the KS2 SATs.

I have a tin hat about a lot of things going on in education at the moment. The Cummings/Gove thing is just half of it.

I have to say I never realised how bad it was in some schools in terms of space until reading posts on here since Covid. It seems more a problem with secondary, I think? My DD is at primary and so far all her classrooms have been quite big. Room for teacher's desk, carpet space, the tables, a sink, place for art to dry and a table for the water bottles, drawers and shelves and a reading corner. They have also had lots of windows and a door to the outside. I have to say from what I've read on here I'm dreading secondary. Not even having soap in the toilets, let alone enough toilets - horrifys me!

At lot of people I qualified as a teacher at Uni with now work in private schools, mainly so they can have a life without a lot of the ridiculous admin and so their child can go there with a massive discount. We scrimp and save to send our children to private because I know what schools today are like after working in them. They are not fit for purpose. Most teachers are brilliant, a few are terrible but you can’t get rid of them. Huge classes, awful buildings and no money. My child goes to school in a massive, modern, bright, purpose built building where each classroom has double doors into the playground, acres of playing fields, classes of 12-15, specialist teachers for art, music etc. and teachers who aren’t burnt out as they have 1.5 days PPA time a week. I’m furious that every child and teacher can’t have this as standard.

Next year there wont be enough money for 25 children to the class, then you'll be into really convoluted mixed age throughout the school, 32 kids in each.
Or you'll keep 25 kids to a class, but no TA support for that bottom lot who need support, or the child who walks out in every lesson after throwing a chair, but who doesnt pass the threshold for support or an ehcp.
Do you work in my school Goats? That's exactly my situ next term - severe behaviour issues, no TA, 2 new students (potentially vulnerable), no resource to support any specific needs.
Other classes in my school have been combined to make classes of 34 - 34 7 year olds, can you imagine?!
I dreamt about our first day back, it was wonderful - I had a TA!

@itsgettingweird

I think the thing that surprised me most is that they are paying up to £50 per family to a restaurant for EOTHO.

OTOH they have categorically states to schools there is no funding for the extra requirement required for Covid and cleaning etc and if any death happens in a school they will be investigated for liability.

😢😢😢

@UndertheCedartree 1400 on roll. 3 toilet blocks for boys and 3 for girls. Maybe 20 cubicles in total for each. Plus one disabled toilet. For 1400 students.
Staff have access to 5 toilets for men and 5 for women. For 100 staff.