School budgets - how would outcomes change if we went right back to basics?

[Emphasise]

Teachers cost money, good ones worth their weight in gold, most schools spend well over 80% of their budget on salaries.

But the other 20%, what really effect would it have on the children, especially in primary schools if (and these are all based on upcoming or ongoing costs in my school)

• smart boards aren't replaced - return to basic black/whiteboards
• ditto old children's Lap tops/pcs/ipads
• PE is playground games that don't need equipment or specialist coaches?
• Focus us on teaching Maths and English rather than art, science, cooking or other subjects that use materials
• They used scrap paper and pencils rather than individual whiteboards (when I started in school I couldn't believe how much was spent on whitebiard pens! 10 % of the curriculum budget in my small infant school this year)

-Remove LSAs

Anyway it's just occurred to me that in my 1970s primary school we didn't have any of these things. Was the education the children were getting so much worse?

I don't have an opinion on it, it's just a thought for discussion, as schools are going to have to change something.

Re: school equipment. A colleague from Ireland was telling me that it's always been the case there that parents have to buy their children text books when they go to secondary. It's both expected and accepted.

We have gone too far in our country of handing children everything on a plate. When I was at school for GCSE work we had to buy a ring binder for various subjects, our own refill pad, pritt stick, plastic wallets etc. It was just part of being equipped for school. Now it seems the kids just turn up for school and expected to be handed all that by their teacher. The concept of supplying their own equipment seems completely alien to most pupils in my school.

I don't know.....I can't see things improving in education and think I'm ready for a change. But so disheartening when it's what you believe in and have for years. There is no other sector like it.

Curlyhaired, what you are describing is otherwise called taxation: parents paying more for their children's education. And yes it is needed. But this kind of quasi-taxation (ie parents who are able to afford it buying equipment for their kids etc) is not organised, fair, progressive and calculated into the government's budget properly...it just relies on the fact that in some areas parents will be able to help (and already do by the way, through PTA fundraising). That is all well & good, but what about the schools & areas where parents simply won't or can't fund anything for their kids? Those schools will just progressively become even worse.

This is why countries relying on charitiesin this case, the charity of parentsis the wrong way to build a welfare system. Because, despite the good that charities do, inevitably they do not cover the whole population and make choices as to where the money goes. Eg some charities only fund religious groups. Or in this case, some schools with better off parents will have more money than others.

Much better to have a properly funded, fair & equal for all welfare system, health system & education system.

I know this is far from 'evidence'and very hard to measure happiness, but have a look at a report about the happiest countries in the world. Not surprisingly, it is countries that still offer a strong welfare system in terms of at least the basics: health, education, social care, for all citizens. Totally doable for a country like the UK which taxes so little for corporation tax & which is one of the wealthiest in the world. It's a matter of priorities, that's all.

and let's not even start about children's social care which is an area I know quite closely from my work, and which makes my blood boil. If we as a society cannot look after our most vulnerable childrenand we DON'T, believe methen I'm not sure we are a society worth its name. More like an each person for themselves jungle.

CurlyhairedAssassin - do you have any idea how aggravating it is when you say "we have gone too far in this country" and then describe a situation of a school well funded enough not to already be expecting parents to pay for their children's pens and glue and scissors and textbooks and DT materials and food tech ingredients etc?. What you seem singularly unable to grasp is that there is a colossal funding disparity between schools in this country and what you think is normal is not the norm everywhere. The government has no idea whatsoever how much it costs to run a school, so has let a situation build up where some schools are genuinely underfunded and have been for many years, and the proposed "new funding formula" will not result in those schools ceasing to be underfunded, they will simply be underfunded less than they might have been (but still worse off going into the future than they are now, when they are underfunded already...). Meanwhile, relatively well funded schools will have the drops in their funding capped so as to reduce the shock and schools that have been scraping by will now also enter into the genuinely underfunded category. It's pathetic how useless the DfE is, that it really doesn't have a clue.

Schools could try keeping old text books in use rather than just putting them in cupboards and forgetting about them and regularly buying new . They could also buy "generic" text books rather than ones tailored specifically to a particular exam board and exam spec.

I remember back in my school days, having text books that were 10-15 years old, as proved by the issue list at the front. We all knew that the entire book was no longer relevant - the teachers would tell us which entire chapters weren't needed anymore and highlight any differences of the current curriculum as we worked through the text book so that we knew which bits not to look at etc.

In my day, we were in the middle of the transitioning between CSE/GCE to GCSE so there was a lot of change happening but the school didn't just go out and buy a job lot of brand new text books tailored to the new curricula.

There were also some teachers who'd hand out text books for use during the lesson only when they thought that an older/different text book was better for a particular topic - basically instead of our issued text books. It was a real "mix and match" between our issued book, a book for the lesson duration only, duplicated sheets prepared by the teacher, or blackboard/OHP lessons. Seemed to work well enough.

I've recently been looking at the text books (paper and online) used by my year 10 son for his GCSEs. For example, he's just been given a brand new Physics text book which I thought was strange as he'd already been given a second hand one in year 9 that had been handed back after the year 11's had handed them back in and was in good condition. It was no surprise to me that kinetic energy is still 1/2mv2 or that V=IR. I'd say that at least 90% of the new book contains the same information of the old one, in fact, I'd say that at least 75% was the same as my old text book of the 1980's.

So my son now has 2 virtually identical text books. Why? Wouldn't it be cheaper for the school to write a few sheets on any new material needed and just photocopy and hand it out to the class or cover it via the white board and power point slides etc?

It seems that today's "norm" is to have a specific text book tailored to a specific exam board and exam spec, which is causing the school to either spend money regularly or simply not provide text books at all and rely on teachers generating their own materials. When did we move away from using "generic" text books that lasted a lot longer?

Oh, ffs. Do you have any idea how expensive photocopying is, too? And if children want textbooks at ds's school, they pay for them themselves, unless they are pupil premium children. And yes, they do have old textbooks, too, from which teachers copy bits that are relevant. They do not have enough of any type of textbook to let children take copies home, though - if you want a textbook, you buy it yourself.

If you want to see what teachers think to the suggestion that they should take a pay cut because the government can't be arsed to fund education properly (while awarding themselves pay increases), check out the comments on this TES article:

www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/if-we-keep-going-about-education-funding-cuts-teachers-and-teaching

roundaboutthetown: you misunderstood me. I wholeheartedly agree with you that schools are grossly underfunded, and that the government hasn't got a clue. The problem in my particular school is a behavioural one. The kids come to school unequipped for whatever reason: can't be arsed to check their bag, their parents don't periodically check they are equipped, claim they didn't have time to go to a shop at the weekend to replace their pen. Full on unwillingness to organise themselves and take responsibility for themselves. They expect their teacher to supply them for the lesson. There are so many kids in that position that the lesson can't move on, because there is nothing left in the departmental budgets to supply these kids.

The kids just expect to be given it. They don't understand there is no money. The school is doing what it can to improve the behavioural aspects of not being equipped for school but the sheer numbers of pupils who can't be arsed to equip themselves is astounding. I'm talking about a quarter of the year group turning up to a maths exam without so much as a pen.

Incidentally, what type of school is yours and where in the country?

Sorry that was to roundaboutthetown

And my school is not one of the ones that has been more welll-funded than others. A year or two we lost lots of staff through redundancies. We have hardly any TAs left or welfare type staff. We have been told that things are not good at all this year and we are all again holding our breath for more redundancy announcements amongst support staff despite there being no room for manoeuvre as we are already down to the bare bones with a lot of jobs getting done only down to the goodwill of staff who can't sustain that long term and who are now at breaking point. Yes, things are certainly shit.

Yet I hear about schools in London who have virtually had money thrown at them these past few years.

It's a sad state of affairs when you start getting emails from colleagues suggesting looking at crowd-funding websites for supplying certain things.

This government has no idea. They want more and more things in education to be target-driven to meet their silly inspection standards, but don't want to provide the resources to schools to be able to fulfill that. Absolute madness.

I went on a course about applying for grant funding recently. There was a session on crowd funding - apparently one school in our county has had all the windows replaced after fundraising in this way.Under funding schools is wrong but that doesn't mean schools finding creative ways to raise money is wrong too

I didn't say it was wrong If that's the only way things can get done. I said it was sad - hard-working staff, already under pressure are in effect having additional tasks burdened upon them in this way. Their job should be to teach and to support children in their learning. Not to source money to replace windows. It's pressure on top of pressure.

Staff have the ability to be creative for these things usually. What they often don't have these days is time to do it. Is it right that teachers are going home at night for a heavy session's marking, only for them to finish exhausted and then have to look at crowd-funding websites in order to teach their subject properly.z

No wonder we can't recruit to the teaching profession in this country.

So many of us buy gifts for teachers - what if they started a gift list at a stationers ad instead of getting them chocolates we got them whiteboard pens (etc)? Or would teachers be peed off as they wouldn't get chocolate?

I am a governor at 3 schools. All are good or better schools in LAs who are near the bottom of the funding ladder. The common theme in all three schools is that we do not ask parents for money other than visits and that we have been very careful of our spending over the last 5 years. We have always spent all the funding on our pupils.

We are going to suffer over the next 3 years just like many other schools and redundancies may be on the way in 2019, when the real crunch comes - yes we know that because we have done the necessary forward planning.

It does make me angry to hear how much some schools are in debt and how much they are asking parents for. So I have to question just what has been going on in lots of schools that are in debt and what they have been spending the money on and that seems to be more than basics.

Perhaps the good or better schools don't have the same issues as the ones who are struggling to get good? I.e. Average ability of intake? Problematic family background issues? Number of pupils with SEN?
I'm talking secondary though. One of my nearest outstanding secondary schools is a grammar. Seems to please ofsted that they are high-achieving. Yet if you give it a closer look it has many faults. Another school which is due for re-inspection may be doing some things far better than the grammar yet things like family background of the kids has a massive impact on the behaviour of the pupils and therefore on attainment. It's like comparing apples and oranges.

What I'm saying is, some good or outstanding schools don't necessarily NEED as much money as others as the kids will achieve anyway due to a lot of different factors. it's not a case of some schools WASTING money. They are doing their best in difficult circumstances for their intake and catchment, and this often demands more money.

admission - the school I am a governor at (primary) is not running and has never run a deficit, nor has it ever asked parents directly for voluntary contributions for anything but school trips and swimming lessons. That's not to say it has not relied on money from school lettings and the PTA in the last couple of years to balance the books... However, grammar schools have specifically said they would start asking parents for monetary contributions, if they are not already - or do you not pay attention to the news? Clearly the government approves of this stance, as it approves of grammar schools. If primary schools denuded of any specialist music provision, language provision, forest schools, pastoral support, etc, are OK by you, and secondaries which are looked down on by parents because they don't provide what grammar schools do appeal to you, then go ahead and keep cutting everything out at your schools without questioning the sanity of the fact that the DfE has seen fit to create a national curriculum for maintained schools that it has never had any intention of funding adequately, because it doesn't care, it just likes to waste everyone's money and time forcing untested political change and demanding the world whilst handing out peanuts.

Hmm, my primary school was awful. Task led - there's a textbook, do that. Very little, if any, actual teaching. I wouldn't want to go back to that!

That being said, I agree that a lot of money is wasted. I recognise it's unfortunate but there are studies questioning how effective the use of TAs is, which is not to dismiss the hard work individuals put into their work of course.

And yes, you will find that a school which is not rated good or outstanding already will cost more to run, so probably won't be as lucky financially as your schools or the primary at which I am a governor, admission, because a school that is not good already requires more input to improve. And input costs money, because that is people's time you are talking about. Why not spend some of your expertise as a governor on a school that needs it more, admission, if you are wondering how deficits happen - see if you can work your magic on a struggling school's budget, instead of enjoying overseeing three good or outstanding schools?

Ps I'm not a governor at my ds's secondary, but I'm not aware of it running a deficit. I know that many schools in the county are, though.

Pps redundancy is expensive and the wrong staff tend to choose to leave, so good luck with your redundancy talks, admission - or keep your fingers crossed that staff just leave so you don't have to get rid of them.

I think many secondaries have just about managed financially, in the past 2 or 3 years, after a wave of staffing cuts just before that. Now despite reducing their staffing costs, they are NOT only just managing and many facing deficit for the first time.

I think our budget last year was down to a couple of 100 quid in left in the pot after all costs accounted were for. This was unprecedented and staff were warned that things were unlikely to improve in the next couple of years, in fact the implication was that we should brace ourselves.

We are just one of many secondaries in my LA facing this situation. Thank god it is finally being properly publicised in the press and it is no longer something that an individual school feels it has to hide from parents. Because we are ALL in the same boat.

Yes.Lets go back to children learning to read and write using slates. Could have the pupil teacher system back too, that should save a bit on salaries. Rows of desks too, that way it is easier to get 50 in a classroom.

I expect private schools will soon follow suit , after all they won't want to give their pupils TOO much of an advantage in the 21 st century job market will they.