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,

We have only had an increase in funding because of an increase in pupil numbers, and we have also hit the minimum funding guarantee so that we are limited to a real term decrease of 1.5%. If we had not increased our pupil numbers, we would have received less cash.

For more detail - all schools lost their £40K block grant, which was supposed to be made up by increase in other per-pupil payments. Those payments, for our school, do not amount to £40K. This is the case for all the small primaries round our area - not a particularly deprived area, rural enough to have small schools, but not rural enough to trigger rural school payments.

admission
Ok but real actual spending on pupils has fallen.
If you can buy less then you get less.
The costs of materials has risen.
School trips, meals, wages, insurance, stationary, repair and maintenance to name but a few.
Academies can not write off debt or transfer it to the LA.
For example families not paying for school meals. In the past this debt would have been passed to the LA. Now it isn't so the school has to pay it.
Even in small schools this can mount up and be a sizeable amount.
'real' spending per child has decreased.

Sadly it is true that budgets are getting squeezed and SEN in particular needs more funding. Poor school leaders and managers have their work cut out for them in making things work. It's not irresponsible to prewarn parents or take them on the journey. Parent power cam sometimes make a difference.

However, it is not true that the latest pay award was unfunded, that TPS is going from 14pc to 50pc unfunded (its currently 16.48pc to begin with and the increase to 23ish will be mostly funded) and so on. This sort of letter would make me worry about whether or not the head has a grasp of how funding works in their school, waht the cost base really is and how to get it under control. This is not the case in all schools and i am not asking people to translate this to mean that i am referring to them or their school.

My DS school wrote to let us know that 5 teachers livelihoods were dependent on our donations which i knew for a fact was untrue but even if it was was unfair to those of us struggling on lower household incomes than the average M6 teacher. I did promise to attend events and buy as many overpriced PTA snacks as possible for as long as I could. I also volunteered to help review costs and contracts if they ever needed it.

There really are inefficient schools out there who have struggled to make the transition to a leaner way of working. I have visited 2 schools within half a mike whose photocopier contracts had a price difference of over £300k per annum, one paid additional allowances of £100k for no actual additional work more than the other because staff would leave and said staff didnt want more work. Been to schools where they ran sets of between 6 or 8 in year groups of between 93 and 130. At 30 per class, it should have been less but the timetable 'shell' when the school was oversubscribed years ago was based on 8 and 6 and the timetabler says its impossible to timetable in odd numbered set sizes. I have alao been to schools were there's nothing left to squeeze. Teachers are at max load and then some, support staff are minimal and shared across schools, teachers buy their own teas and coffees, everybody covers, everybody invigilates, even spouses have been known to register as volunteers to pitch in with admin and classroom support. I do some school business support work with schools and have seen different scenarios. The support is government funded and at no cost to the school as far as I'm aware. School Management rarely get the time and headspace needed to properly reflect and plan. And hardly the CPD or away day they deserve so wont always see thewood for the trees.

We really cant always say that this school has done everything it can just because ours has.

Have to agree with everything you say. Every school has to be looked at as an individual and unique organisation and often there are things that can be changed to improve the financial situation, though maybe not very popular!
Any school who is in debt but then is not happy to accept somebody coming in to suggest where savings might be possible is living in a different parallel world from reality.