Government says education spending is at its highest ever at £40 billion yet 'small' school are under threat....so where is the £40 billion going?

[MillyDLA]

And even more worrying a 'small, school is 200 children!

Personal and local experience is of many primary schools being less than 200. Making larger schools and sharing staff isn't always a reality given large rural counties with a spread out population.

Which areas of the public sector have severe recruitment issues?

I don't think that universities are subject to such strict targets and harsh penalties for failure to meet them as schools? You're saying that slicing budgets and maintaining the same service can't continue, but schools are being told to slice budgets and improve services.

The Government has chosen to go for populist tax cuts
so there is less money in the kitty

The "Living Wage" has had a horrific impact on School budgets
because it was a 10% increase in pay
which was then compounded by ERS NI and Pension contributions
to a 20% uplisft in staffing costs for support staff
when there was no uplift in the budget of the school

let alone the gross unfairness of the funding formula
that gives London kids much more money than everybody else

I don't quite understand the school cuts website because I looked at some schools in one of the poorest-funded counties and their school budgets were projected to be cut more than my school's, which is in a reasonably well-funded area, yet it's supposed to take the fairer funding formula into account.

The numbers in the at school cuts website are piffle
It says that the school I checked will lose two teachers
which it wont because its a single form entry primary with one teacher per year group and a head

I think it means it will have to make cuts equivalent to the cost of two teachers, not two teachers.

I know, but its an irresponsible and emotive way to phrase it.
THat and I know the Education chief for our county and they are working how to help all the schools they have responsibility for.

The Academies are a different matter - too many heads lining own pockets and only hiring NQTs

Ta1k,I agree with you about academies, too much money going to CEO 's but academy money is from the same tax payers pot. All children lose.

And also you say a school can't lose two teachers because it is one form entry. But if the budget isn't enough, then yes teachers will be lost. Schools will have to restructure and make the best of it; larger classes, more of a mix of age groups, perhaps a headteacher who needs to teach and run the school. Difficult to do when there are so many changes to education and the pressure to improve is immense.

The big proposed drop in early years funding is also about to stop early years providers and schools being able to afford to educate our youngest children. Funding offered by the government isn't enough to cover the associated costs Private nurseries aren't going to run businesses that make a loss, schools can't either.

There is a huge shortage of social workers and that is a very comparable job. Huge shortage of GPs and that job pays more than a teacher (and so it should). Big shortage of paramedics and prison officers. All these jobs have decent pensions which are much better than many private sector pensions and certainly worth a lot more than self-employed pensions where the individual has to put in 100% of contributions. As said above, the school's contribute huge amounts to LA and teacher pension schemes.

Anyone who has a golden handshake should have golden handcuffs for a few years too. That is perfectly reasonable. There has been a huge inflation in ceo payments at the top end. The more complex a system becomes, the more Chiefs are appointed and the more they earn.

Interesting about social workers. They're demonised in the press too which can't help with recruitment.

I just looked at the government shortage occupation list that allows you to hire from abroad: www.gov.uk/guidance/immigration-rules/immigration-rules-appendix-k-shortage-occupation-list

Huge number of engineer posts on the list. That situation is never going to be fixed until we sort the issue of maths and physics teachers.

I don't think that universities are subject to such strict targets and harsh penalties for failure to meet them as schools?

Well, extremely heavy monitoring of teaching is coming from the government. Within a couple of years, there will be the equivalent of "Ofsted failure" for universities and this will imply no visas for foreign students -> possible bankruptcy/huge redundancies.

And you are forgetting about the research side of universities. We have targets for grant income for staff; penalties for failure to meet targets (pay cuts, termination of contracts); typical workloads of 60+ hours per week 51 weeks per year etc etc. And BTW we also have seen big cuts to budgets combined with a pressure to teach more/research more/deliver more impact to society/do more broadening access work etc. At the level of research councils, budgets are down considerably and yet the research objectives have expanded at the same time. We are expected to do a lot more for less funding and reducing pay.

And, yes, as well as the ones bojo mentions, there are shortages in areas that require specific skills, STEM etc.

Huge number of engineer posts on the list. That situation is never going to be fixed until we sort the issue of maths and physics teachers.

No, it's never going to be fixed until society as a whole values STEM more. Private schools have no issues getting great maths and physics teachers but nonetheless typically don't send a much bigger fraction of their pupils to study STEM (excluding medicine) at university.

BTW in many universities academics' pay is now directly correlated with students' assessments of their teaching. Scores below 80% satisfaction result in pay freezes or worse. In some sense this is even worse than judging on actual results of students - students' opinions (which may well be coloured by biases, women and ethnic minorities score lower than white men) rather than students' achievements determine your pay.

Maths and Physics teachers are one aspect of encouraging young people into Engineering, although typically these teachers do not know about the whole range of career opportunities in Egineering and think, as the media does, that only Dyson and product design is engineering or, that it is the personwho repairs a washing machine . Most maths and physics teachers do not understand chemical engineering, environmental engineering, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, computer engineering and so on. Careers advice for engineering subjects is woeful. My DH was lucky enough, many years ago, to do an Engineering A level. He sailed through Y1 of university. Engineering in schools (Technology?) has been dumbed down so much that young people never get a real taste of what they could be doing. My DH also did an Architecture course whilst at school and has lessons at a university in their Engineering Department. No-one is remotely inspirational in schools regarding how to motivate young people to be Engineers. The curriculum is only geared towards academic maths and physics, or some sort of technical curriculum that does not prepare for rigorous Engineering courses at university.

Also, graduates from the many of the top universities do not go into engineering jobs. They go into City jobs, in finance and managment consultancy. This exacerbates the shortage. Teaching, and not even fairly well paid graduate engineering jobs, cannot hope to steer them away from far more lucrative careers in the city. The truth is that lots of young people do not want to be Engineers because they do not know what the opportunities are and they are not stimulated at school into thinking about this career. No amount of maths teachers and physics teachers will change this unless society changes its views on the status of Engineers and engineering opportunities are the norm in schools.

I also think you really have to want to be an engineer and have the necessary skills and attributes, not just STEM subjects, but problem solving, taking things to peices, learning how to construct machines and buildings, understanding the issues that Engineers need to solve, etc. You really cannot persuade arts people to swap into engineering if their heart is not in it and it makes no difference as to who is teaching them!

Also lots of schools, and the public, do not understand that Chartered Engineers and Engineering graduates are not the people who fix your washing machine! We do not give respect to Chartered Engineers in this country and the pay for many is not fantastic after 5 or 10 years. It takes many more years to be a Chartered Engineer than it does a teacher, by the way. Both suffer from being perceived as less than glamorous and with capped earnings that do not match qualification and effort.

Rather long message and probably off topic - sorry!

Can I just say, that sharing staff is not necessarily what federating schools is about. Two small primary schools could become an infant school and a junior school but with shared SLT. Rural schools have done this to keep both schools open and it works. Only the SLT move on different days of the week, not everyone.

Federating schools isn't an answer for many small schools. It works for a few, some have tried it and it has failed. Deficit budgets in two small schools doesn't make one larger school with enough money. The cost of a HT (shared) in a small school will save less than £25,000 per school.

The HT role alone isn't enough to ensure leadership capacity. Ofsted current focus on middle leadership, giving capacity to improve and sustain improvements. Middle leadership in a small school is a class teacher with a number of subject responsibilities. To share middle leadership and build capacity across the two schools, the class teachers would need none contact time to support on the other site. This costs in supply cover, in travelling time and if not managed can be detrimental to the class teachers own class whilst they are busy on the other school site.

I'm in a MAT and we share a 'director' of maths with another secondary school. He's supposed to spend some time in our school and some time in the other school. What actually happens is that the other school is doing badly so he spends loads of time over there firefighting, my school is pretty neglected and you can never get hold of him because you never know where he is meant to be.

Saving £25k per school IS a big deal and funds an extra member of staff in each school. It's two teachers/classroom assistants instead of 1 HT - sounds like a good solution.

Teachers with particular responsibilities can swap over from one school to the other either occasionally or say one day per week, whatever suits the schools/needs. So a teacher with Maths leadership in school A goes to school B and teaches/mentors/trains in school B whilst teacher with English leadership in school B goes to school A on the same day.

It works in businesses - managers often move around from one branch to another. A book-keeper may work in site A on Mondays, B on Tuesdays and C on Wed-Fri. A bit of planning and open-mindedness/flexibility is all that's needed.

£25,000 is not a big deal when the deficit is £80,000 in year!
There would also be additional payments needed for the HT of more than one school so savings are lessened.

Federation also has to involve more than a shared HT otherwise the HT is trying to attend two of everything; two sets of parents evenings per term; two nativities/harvests; two new starters meetings and two sets of governors meetings per term. Governors are often more reluctant to join in a shared governance arrangement than anyone else associated.

The 'swapping' of teachers sounds great on paper. I think in your analogy the business manager is a poor example. Business managers work with computers and numbers, not children who need consistency and good relationships.
In reality there is so much pressure for children to make progress that handing your own class to someone else isn't always the best option. Relationships with children are vital, teaching style, assessment, moderation, standards, work scrutiny, policies, marking and feedback, parents ....

And needs to be logistically possible. The federated school needs to be close by, otherwise teachers spend more time travelling than teaching. Who holds the two classes whilst the two teachers swap schools? Yes it could be before school, but only if this is possible given where teachers live in relation to work.

This, like anything else works for some. In some areas this might be 4 or 5 schools working together. In other schools it has been tried and failed.

£25,000 in a school budget is nowhere NEAR two members of staff.

The £25,000 is the cost to the school of the employee
once you knock nback the 13.8% ERS NI
and the 16% ERS pension contributions,

its a salary of around £16000 a year

It is good to see people asking questions about school finance. I just wish that I could persuade schools to pay as much attention to the figures. Far too many schools simply bumble along assuming everything will work out but this time it is not going to happen. There will be major issues in many schools because both the staff of the school and the governing boards are not paying enough attention to what is creeping up on them whilst they slumber in the world of nod. They need to wake to a new reality.

The 'swapping' of teachers sounds great on paper. I think in your analogy the business manager is a poor example. Business managers work with computers and numbers, not children who need consistency and good relationships.

Business managers mostly work with people/teams - certainly in the firms I work with. Perhaps managers in schools hide behind their desks and computers, but it's not like that in business. As regards relationships with children, it's no different to having part time teachers where a class have two teachers sharing the week - a teacher working 3 days in school A and 2 in school B, matched by another doing the opposite, is no different to having two part time teachers in the same school sharing a class. Different kinds of options at least need to be explored rather than just wanting to do the same as they've always done.

Business managers in schools do just that, manage the business side - usually shared between schools. They don't have any contact with children.