School cuts - what on earth can parents do?

[SecretMagicThings]

I’m a parent with children in a primary school. The school’s budget has been slashed and they have had to make a number of support staff and TAs staff redundant. Everyone is upset, parents, staff and students are visibly upset at the end of term. Children will lose out from this and staff morale is rock bottom.

Although a lot of the parents are annoyed, they are annoyed at the headteacher (who had stated this is financial and out of their control) and the Trust. It’s an academy school and although I am no fan of the Trust I don’t think we can entirely blame them for this... but maybe I am wrong?

I haven’t heard anyone (except me!) blame current education policy and story cuts. I find it so disheartening that the same people who are crying in the playground do not seem to link this with their votes in local and general elections. I know people can vote how they want but they seem to think the academies have all the power and none of this is linked to government education and spending policies.

I have written to my MP multiple times but will write again on this issue. I have commented that this is the risks of austerity policies, although of course people can vote how they like. I have complained to the MAT. I am aware this will all do nothing. As a parent I am assuming there is nothing else I can do but wonder if there is?

Tory not story!

Get out there and go canvassing in the next elections. If you're already in a non Tory area then go to the next closest that needs turning , you'll be made very welcome. And I doubt you'll have long to wait now

In the meantime, gather together important information. Find out what cuts your school has experienced, and break them down to something people can understand quickly - the amount per child, and/ or how many staff that amounts to. In my area we put together a leaflet that covered the above for all the local schools, it was a really useful conversation starter.

Thanks for your reply. I am a HCP so I need to look at how much I am ‘allowed’ to canvass (I have no idea at all!). We are in a Tory safe seat which is what pisses me off so much. The same people complaining about the cuts voted for them and will do again :(

Money’s horribly tight everywhere not just in education.
We have a small rural state primary so we get less than everyone else. But it’s a great school. So we fundraise, all year, we pay for everything we can so the school budget can go on salaries & pensions. Some of our Sahms do 25 hours a week fundraising, parents do grounds maintenance, hold endless cake & jumble sales, raffles, quiz nights. We beg funds from local companies, run marathons. we have retired teachers helping in class.

It shouldn’t be like this but it is. Regardless of one’s politics

That is true :( . I suppose that is partly why I posted as I do have a tendency to blame politics for it when there is a general lack of money everywhere. The school is talking about more redundancies in the next term :(

It's awful OP. I can't think of anything except we should all bombard our MPs. Mine is Jo Johnson (brother of Boris) and I am going to write to him.

For comprehensives, their shortfall is £££,£££, which is far more than can be clawed back with cake sales and feted.

I am very aware of the cuts to health but I suppose I have got used to that as an NHS worker. Seeing teachers and children crying all this week has just been awful and has pushed me into rage!

We managed to raise an extra £340 per child this year but it took an enormous effort, some people basically worked for the school for free.
We can sustain it for only so long, maybe another year or two. All it will take is a couple of years with no committed & determined mums in the intake, and we’ll be in the mire too.

That's amazing @Kingsclerelass !

That is amazing! Such a shame you had to do that but really amazing.

Each year gets harder though. People get tired of listening, so any ideas would be good.

To be honest I’m surprised you’ve sustained it for so long. It is very hard to stay motivated to fund something that shouldn’t be funded centrally. No ideas, sorry :(

And as greencat says, trying to do that in a 1200 pupil comprehensive Is just impractical.

My DCs' comp has had to cut around 8-10 full-time posts in the last 3 years.

When I lived in Australia we had to buy our children’s text books, exercise books and stationery. There was also a ‘fee’ of a couple of hundred dollars a year. Nothing was free. Not swimming lessons or fruit or speech therapy.

At the start of every term you had to bring a box of tissues for the classroom.

Every classroom had a blank timetable for the term outside and it was expected that you would put your name down to volunteer in your child’s classroom.

Yes, I think I would rather have that HaaaHaaa than so many staff losing jobs. What happens to people who can’t afford to pay though?

@HaaaHaaaa what are the taxes like in Australia?

My DCs have not had text books up til now (y11 and y9) - just photocopies. We are supposed to buy text books for y12.

We had serious amounts of volunteering for primary. Up til about y3, 3 parents per week to help with reading. During the summer term, throughout all of primary, 4 parents to help at each swimming lesson. Then several for each trip..... and all the fund raising etc etc etc

I live in a village in the country. Many people in my village do not work and live in houses that are worth over a million pounds. I know of 3 families who have their DC sent to and from state secondary in a taxi because it is too far to walk (1.5 miles) and there is no bus. The SAHM's know they can get this and so don't mention that they can drive them in their massive Audi Q7's. This is just 3 that i know of. There are many more villages around here.

This is not a joke. No wonder the schools have no money.

That's odd @TypicallyNorthern. Normally you only get assistance with travel to school for journeys over 3 miles or special needs.

Have you looked at the school's accounts op? There should be a link on the school's website. The accounts can be quite illuminating when you realise how much some Trusts are paying their senior leadership teams and executives. How many assistant head teachers are there? And how many children are in each class? If pupil numbers are declining then funding will be reduced.

@Clavinova one of the main reasons s schools now have less money is because the government has put their costs up. About a year ago, they were boasting that school funding had been maintained which is true.... BUT they 'forgot' to mention that schools had previously had a lower rate of national insurance and that they had abolished it.... thus increasing the costs of an average comprehensive by £££,£££, thus forcing them to make redundancies or cut whole subjects such as A-Level Music.

The academy trust is likely to have a number of highly paid executives, that alongside recent government funding cuts is pushing schools on to their knees in the same way that the NHS has been pushed. Very sad.

If they really gave a shit about their child's education they would give whatever money they could afford to the school/tutor to make up for the shortfall/go private altogether. They are just really entitled and don't seem to think that they should take finacial responsibility for their reiriductive choices.

That’s interesting about accounts and salaries. As I said, I dislike the Trust (a few reasons but mainly I just hate the philosophy of MATs and want education back under LA control). I didn’t even know you could look at accounts as this is all new to me. Perhaps the parents are right to blame the Trust?

There seems to be no interest in holding the Trusts to accounts for their huge salaries does there ?

greencat, I absolutely still hold the government responsible too.

Calvinova, I’m wary about being too specific but there have been a few changes in SLT at the school since it was academised. No assistant head and a variety of interim people although new head since appointed (who seems extremely upset by the staffing cuts tools I said).

The school is oversubscribed with more than 30 children in each class. As is the other local primary. Massive problems looming locally with expanding population and not enough school places. Another thing that I hate about education policies, you can see disaster coming a mile off.

Perhaps I was being naive but i thought Truats had to work with the money they had from the government and were obliged to make these cuts.

Maybe the Trusts are more at fault than I thought? There seems to be no power to change it though. I have complained to the Trust as many other parents had and didn’t even get a reply. In contrast the nice headteacher replied the same day.