school finances situation in your child’s school.

[kafkesque]

Letter received today:

Updating you about school finances
I am sure you will have heard through news and topical radio/television programmes about the crises in school funding and I felt it important to update you about the situation in your child’s school.
Our school is also suffering financially and for a number of reasons. For example, the recent staff pay rises are not centrally funded, meaning we need to find thousands of pounds from this year’s budget. On the horizon, employer’s pension contributions will increase from 14% to 50% by September 2020, resulting in £140,000 to be found (annually) from our school budget. Some centrally funded support for September 2019 is promised, though not from this point onwards.
Schools are now charged for services that used to be free at the point of access. In addition, the needs of our pupils placed at The MSE continue to increase and as such, so do our costs for relevant resources (e.g. reading books, IT equipment and programmes as well as staffing and related training costs.) However, per-pupil funding levels are not keeping pace with the significant extra demands on the school. We know this funding argument is ‘won’ though have no confirmation as to whether any additional finances to support us will actually materialise.
On our doorstep, the cuts to other community services leaves vacuums, for which we find ourselves undertaking crucial pastoral work that would not otherwise be provided for our families.
If only the ‘little extras’ money promised in November’s budget could be for ‘extras’. If we cannot fundraise to meet such additional costs, we will have to make savings in other areas. Fundraising has been very successful at school, but as you can imagine, so many grants, trusts, company and private donors, do not want to spend money on school essentials like staffing, replacing toilets or worn-out flooring.
I am sure you are aware that Teaching Assistants, Teachers, Admin and Leaders at The MSE School regularly undertake unpaid overtime, though you may not be aware that this is often in excess of 30 additional (unpaid) hours per week. This is not just because of the love of the job, but to keep up with the immense demands placed on the school.
I do hope you that won’t find this pessimistic but I wanted to update you about the current situation as I do know you take a keen interest in your child’s education. We remain optimistic - the school continues to innovate and be highly resourceful.
Best wishes,

Surly the problem is that schools are trying to be all things to all people. We need a change where schools go back to just concentrating on educating people. Why do all schools need to provide all subjects to everyone. Why do schools need to be social workers. Why do schools need to provide glue sticks or pencils to all children. Heads need to make a choice that they can't provide everything rather than just spreading their budgets thinner and thinner in a forlorn attempt to pretend they can.

There might be issues in society but schools shouldn't bear the cost of fixing them. The school on the BBC seemed to have packs of feral kids roaming the grounds. Why aren't they expelled immediately and let the parents sort them out. As the head boy said words to the effect, "we need to bring back corporal punishment".

Because children who are permanently excluded cost the taxpayer around £350k over their lifetime.

And because there isn't money for social workers. And because children don't get to pick their parents.

Because children who are permanently excluded cost the taxpayer around £350k over their lifetime
Perhaps if they weren't allowed to go on benefits and faced some actual consequences for their behaviour...

Our local tip has a tip shop. It’s the place to go if you want to view the Dyson & printer mountain!
But there are genuinely good bits in there. Not sure who it’s run by. But it probably requires more organisation and input than you’re probably willing to give, given your general attitude.

Maybe schools should start their budget planning by recording what is reasonable as a figure for teaching equipment, for the school being lit and warm and for the general maintenance needed . Whats left is then what can be spent on staffing. I can however guarantee you that most schools start with the staffing and then look how to make ends meet from the rest of the budget.

so basically fuck the teachers, lets go back to teaching being a calling, and teachers don't need money to buy food.

@Walkingdeadfangirl what's the program on the bbc please?

School

In which its hard to find a child who can talk to a teacher unless they are staring at their phone / simultaneously playing a game. And a Y11 maths class only has 3 pupils because all the other pupils are marauding around the grounds / truanting. Don't even think about the graffiti.

OP, if you are so confident that your children don't need school or teachers, why don't you withdraw your kids from school and put them into one of those online homeschooling programs?

I'm sure they will learn magnificently.

I think schools, teachers just want a cushy number, big salaries and long holidays, they want funding for things other than books, pens, pencils, writing pads, its all about expensive computers, and top notch equipment

Right.

I would imagine that if that letter from your DC’s school is genuine and that you really did send in that reply, someone from the school will have recognised you on here by now and knows for sure what a totally unpleasant GF you are.

Do your children have much longer at this school?

admission
Those are bottom line figures.It would be more interesting to see how those deficits came about. Its not just a reduction in government funding, there are other reasons which cause it.

With any public sector/quango style of organisation, it's always about grants and spending. They seem blind to looking for alternative income sources.

Schools are sat on massive resources. They need to rent out their property, they need to sell off unused equipment. School Governors should really be pushing raising finance from other avenues and not just always relying on the govt grants.

what a totally unpleasant GF you are.

What is GF?

They need to rent out their property, they need to sell off unused equipment.

Eh? They do. My dc's secondary school is a church at the weekend!

GF is a goady fucker.

Fundraising cannot be used to pay for staff by the way. You seem quite ignorant of facts. Go fundraise yourself if you think you can. That's the role of a PTA. Go and do it rather than moan here.

kafkesque
With any public sector/quango style of organisation, it's always about grants and spending. They seem blind to looking for alternative income sources.
Schools are sat on massive resources. They need to rent out their property, they need to sell off unused equipment.

How can you pretend to know so much when you actually know so little?

Scholl governors are doing everything. I say that as one. We are also volunteers with jobs.

Each child with an EHCP costs the school £6k.

Schools act as social workers because there is none that we can access.

There are more children with special needs because there are no alternative options and actually in the majority of cases they should be. They do however come with inadequate resources.

If a child needs speech therapy, if you are lucky enough to get one, they teach the TA how to do the speech therapy and they are expected to get on with it.

Most schools are good at getting grants but this money is ring fenced and cant be used on staffing, which is 85 % plus cost of running a school.
Getting grants and raising money costs in time which is then not available for other things.

You can only get camhs support if there is fire need, e.g. a child has tried to kill themselves, not just contemplating killing themselves.

There is a crisis in high needs funding and the way this is being fixed is taking away some of the inadequate school funding to put in that pot.

Schools have pay business rates which is essentially just giving back the money you've been given.

If people either spent their time lobbying government for adequate funding or volunteered to help that would be time better spent rather than whinging about how crap schools are. They are absolutely stretched to their limits.

More children with special needs in school is what I meant. Children who need wheelchair access, blind, downs syndrome, autistic etc. They should be in mainstream school and they need adequate support and resources.

Btw have you tried to rent out a school hall, when there is also a competing venue opposite.

The stark answer is very simple, if there is no increase in funding and the expenditure goes up then there will have to be cuts in staffing and there will be a reduction in the education that current pupils receive.

This. Its an uncomfortable conversation, but an essential one. If we do not increase funding in line with required expenditure, the quality of state school education will drop. We have reached a tipping point where it is no longer possible to continue to cut without affecting students directly. So we need an open and honest discussion, as a country. Do we want education to at least remain at the same standard and if so, are we prepared to pay for it?

There have already been cuts to students.

Reduction in subject choice at GCSE and a levels.

Reduction in numbers of gcses students are able to take due to funding. My ds will take one less than his sister.

Btw have you tried to rent out a school hall, when there is also a competing venue opposite.

It's not so much the hall that's in demand in our area - what's in demand are the playing fields for the local football teams. We don't have a playing field (we use the junior school's for sports days and the like) so that source of income's not viable for us (the juniors rent theirs out a lot), and we can't compete with what the local community centres charge for hall hire really in terms of the staffing required to open the premises up and close it down (plus working around things like breakfast and after-school care).

There are lots of venues hiring halls and rooms out in our local area - hell even the local supermarket has a community room for free.

Maybe the answer is to realise that austerity doesn't work. It's an ideology not an economic theory.

You are either being goady for a laugh or are really, really dim.

Schools need their equipment, buildings and grounds. They use them. They can't sell them off.

Teachers don't have time to set up and run a charity shop. They already work loads of overtime (as the letter pointed out).

If teachers wanted a cushy job and a big salary, they wouldn't go into teaching. If teaching were cushy and well-paid, there wouldn't be a massive teacher shortage.

The Local Authority no longer provides services that it did in 2000. This means we have to pay for them out of our school budget, which has declined in real terms - catering contracts, HR and IT support, for example. We could join an academy and hope that the academy is not a total shitshow (unlikely) and that they would provide services in exchange for their top slice, but many academies take a top slice and provide little in return. Instead we are banding together with other schools to procure services together, and save money.

Parents refuse to engage like they used to, are far more demanding and can be quite useless. We can just about pay for teaching staff at the moment, but nothing else. God help you if you are anything other than a middle of the road child, with a decent family.

And get to fuck with all your ideas about letting parents have a look at the budget. It’s already public record (well, unless you’re an academy, where you can obfuscate the numbers to fuck), and we as governors don’t just sit around drinking tea and eating biscuits. We are making difficult decisions every bloody week, with a damn sight more information and care than a bunch of parents. The idea that a bunch of randoms could magically come up with spare thousands of pounds in our budget is deeply offensive.

Parents refuse to engage like they used to, are far more demanding and can be quite useless.

Oi! I'm a bloody awesome parent (also just-elected parent governor but I'm not counting that yet since I'm just getting my head around it all and it only happened in the last fortnight... and Ofsted are due back this year with a view to seeing if we hit outstanding ) to the extent that I'm using my own primary teacher trained but been out of the classroom a few years background to help the school out running various intervention groups (gets me some recent classroom experience and I enjoy do it) to try to keep things as good as they possibly can be for the kids in the school and support the staff.

I also send cake into the staffroom to say thank you cos the staff are bloody awesome when I can!

We're not all unreasonable demanding sods!

If the letter from the head teacher is genuine - then he/she is a very poor manager.

You don't let your staff regularly undertake overtime in excess of 30 additional (unpaid) hours per week and then 'guilt trip' the parents - you find ways to cut down on marking requirements (each school is different), staff meetings, unnecessary form-filling etc. that you, the head teacher and your SLT are asking them to do.

Why are the school asking for donations of tea, coffee and soft drinks?