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,

regularly raise in excess of £170k a year

Somebody is paid to help us fundraise

how much your school's teachers are actually paid.

I have tried to find out but I think it is secret.

I have tried to find out but I think it is secret.

Ffs I posted a link.

Ffs I posted a link.

Sorry it's not easy for me

kafkesque - have you tried writing to your MP to complain about school funding, given that this is clearly a political issue? Or do you really expect school support staff to work even more than their 30-hours unpaid overtime a week running some kind of recycling business at the local tip (where, no doubt, they will be forced to take out expensive insurance to protect themselves from people who claim to have been injured by the junk they are selling)? Is that an appropriate way to fund a state school? And do you think the cutthroat business practices of people working in the junk trade and making a profit out of it are commonly held skills amongst people attracted to caring for vulnerable people and working in a special school?

Schools do pay business rates

www.tes.com/news/schools-should-be-exempt-ps163m-business-rates-bill

And I seriously doubt anyone is paid to help you fundraise - they will be fitting that around what they are actually paid to do, hence working so much unpaid overtime.

have you tried writing to your MP to complain about school funding, given that this is clearly a political issue?

No they are Tory and friends with the school already because they do so much fundraising.

If you think there is corruption involved in the school's finances and where the money is going is too opaque, and it's an academy, you can complain direct to the DfE. If it's a maintained school, I have no idea why you are finding it so difficult to work out what teachers are paid on average at the school, as that is public information.

Write direct to the DfE, then, campaign against Tory spending on schools, don't vote Tory at the next election? Or write to your MP anyway, because they feel obliged to listen if enough voters complain to them that they start to worry about the result of the next election themselves.

If it's a maintained school, I have no idea why you are finding it so difficult to work out what teachers are paid on average at the school, as that is public information.

Under Workforce and finance

£39,483

It is a community special school. Is that maintained?

kafkesque

neu.org.uk/advice-and-resources/pay/pay-scales-2018-9

Whaaaaaaat? Nothing you post is making sense. You've sent an outrageous email to your head, and seem to think that you will now be summonsed to see them.
The summons reference was in reply to me when I said the OP should raise any legitimate concerns formally through the correct channels instead of sending arsey emails telling the head to open a charity shop.
They've now said they'll present a defence if and when they get summoned over their arsey email.

It's all very bizarre.

To me if there are significant failings in a school over time then I'd have been following protocol and complaints procedures to the letter for each matter in hand. I certainly wouldnt have been all matey with the head bitching and speculating about how many parents have special needs, only to also decide the head is evil and send ridiculous arsey emails to telling them open a charity shop because the school shan't struggle on my watch.

£39,483

Is the national average. All our schools results have not been filled in. It says:
No data available or applicable for this school or college

A community school can be an academy or a maintained school. If you've got that data from workforce and finance rather than some link to a general academy funding document, I expect it's a maintained school, so the Local Authority should be keeping an eye on it. Being a maintained school, you will not find the HT or any other member of staff getting unusual pay packages - it will be in line with other special schools of that size with similarly experienced staff.

kafkesque

Its not the national average for teachers as UPS outside of London only goes to £39,400.

The average has to be lower than that.

Data won't be available if it is not applicable to the school, or relates to such a tiny number of children that you could pretty much identify the children it relates to if it were made public. It won't be unavailable because the school is hiding that data from the government website which publishes it!

I suspect special school teachers get paid more than the average for normal state schools.

(By normal, I mean mainstream).

Watermelon
Teachers in Northern Ireland are paid less than those in England and Wales and Scotland so please do not suggest England and Scotland schools are worse off

If you've got that data from workforce and finance
I compared two special schools that I know of and they both don't show salary information.

On the school website under finance it says it spends £1688506 on Staff Related Expenditure for the 121 pupils of the school.

Belindabauer,
sorry but a lot of what you are saying is simply not true. No schools budget has actually been cut over the last three years unless there are less pupils in the school. The new national funding formula did give rise to winners and losers but the losers were protected so that no school in theory got less funding. What has happened is that the funding has stayed still whilst expenses like staff wages etc have risen and this has widely being quoted as cut in school funding, which it is not.
It is also not true that grammar schools get more funding they get their funding in exactly the same way as every school in the LA they are based in.

Oh we haven’t cut your funding, we’ve just made everything more expensive.

Such a comfort.

admission

Yes we have "in theory" and "in real terms", then we have the underhand redefining of SEND etc.

roundaboutthetown
All jobs I've seen in special schools have a SEN allowance attached to the pay.
noblegiraffe
Yup nothing's actually been cut, but everything has got more expensive and we've also been handing over our central government responsibilities to individual schools to float without giving the right amount of money, oh and when we talk about funding in the press we'll include private school fees and tuition fees because it allows us to hide that we are slashing real terms funding (and that'll get people to complain about lazy greedy teachers just like we did with junior doctors).

It's like the 'little extras' announcement. It wasn't a nice gesture at all. It was designed to make schools point out funding issues only for the government to say to how public 'see, we are so generous and schools are just so ungrateful'. It was a deliberate political ploy.