Impact of new cuts to state school funding

[Novotelchok]

There are a lot of headlines just now about further cuts to state school funding - through inadequate central government funding of pay rises & NI increases, and pupil premium not going up enough. I'm not in England so only know what's in the papers - I'd be very interested to hear how this is impacting schools/ children / families.

I'm not a journalist, just an interested parent & a voter who is pretty worried by what seems to be Austerity 2.0.

We can do our bit to boycott Trump. Stop consuming US tech good for starters. Ditch the Amazon, do not buy a Tesla, buy an electric Chinese car instead, there are many things we can all start doing if the US is nasty to Europe. On the plus side, we should use the opportunity to get closer to Europe again.

If public finances really are very bad, I agree we should not get into more debt and go quasi bust. We should shore up and be in this together. However, MPs do need to cut back themselves. That is where it needs to start. No sleaze, no credit cards, no nice to haves, no big salary increases, no drinking etc.

@twistyizzy my children are in private school. The VAT does affect me to the tune of £640 a month extra just pissed away on fuck all. I'm on another thread that is talking about how much money you have left until payday and I am in both my overdraft and using credit cards until the 1st April because we were already stretched and the VAT has made an affect on us.

I do care about education generally very much. That's why I went to the ridiculously inept council meeting about state school closures in my area. Although it in no way affects me. Because I am concerned about the affects on my relatively rural and relatively small community.

I guess I thought- expected -that the Labour party would not show their true colours this quickly. I always knew they'd be a disaster though.

Pot kettle

My children have friends who were in private schools and many are switching to State Sixth Forms now, post VAT. The offers are coming in thick and fast and the state schools (the best ones) seem very happy to scoop up the private schools candidates. Because the competition for the best candidates applies to state schools too. There is a race for top grades and results if it is a question of numbers and survival. This has all been very badly planned by Labour. Not sure what will happen if thousands and thousands more Sixth Formers join come September. The state will have to find the money.

I have already posted the link to the Guardian article on that

I think we should campaign to make the whole of Westminster booze free for starters.

Completely agree with this.

It’s so bad people bought into the VAT sham.

But it was also obvious attacking the private sector overall would reduce funding.

This is happening because Labour are inept and incompetent. But sold a good lie. Putting a tax on work will filter through to the state sector in time. That’s what we’re seeing now with welfare cuts and education cuts. Plus the rest.

Do not let Labour off the hook. They made a bad situation even worse. By blaming Trump you absolve them of responsibility, which is what they are trying to do themselves.
They have fucked up, in fact by the same measures that they accused Truss of crashing the economy, then they too crashed it! By giving away £10 billion to train drivers in the first month they made that black hole into a super massive black hole whilst simultaneously stifling growth through raising employer NI etc.
They are fiscally incompetent and now schools, the elderly, disabled etc are paying for their incompetence.

Like NHS England, we need to cut the managers in education and have more frontline staff. Less targets, less admin and more actual teachers. There is a huge amount of money being spent on senior leaders in scademy trusts that don't teach but set endless admin tasks and targets. This is driving teachers out of the profession. Return schools to LEAs, which are cheaper and are shown to get slightly better results especially for disadvantaged kids than multi-academy trust schools.

Academies were set up by Labour to deal with under performing LA schools. It wasn't all unicorns + rainbows with LA schools

Targets come from government so you would need to change that whole culture

Do you think the country's finances were in a good state and the public sector in fully working order when Labour took over? Do you think that Trump blowing up our defence alliance hasn't had any impact? It's not letting Labour off the hook to point out that they have been handed a massive bowl of shit that is mostly not of their making.

Also, where did you get £10 billion for train drivers from?

I agree with this. There are too many leadership roles in lots of schools because everyone is terrified of Ofsted, because it is high stakes and career-ending. Reduce the pressure on schools to keep reinventing the wheel and jumping through hoops and focus on good teaching and learning.

Pic didn't add to my last post.

Yeah to make sure you parents get to work on time. Free lunches make no difference to that so they arent bothered.

NI policy impacted growth before foreign aid was cut for defence budget.

OBR has halved the projection. Reeves and co walked into taxing work. Taxing work is obviously anti growth.

No but Labour inherited a growing economy (albeit very very small growth) and have destroyed that
Error in £10billion, I'm blaming copy and paste 😆 it was £1 billion between train drivers + junior doctors.

“Reduce the pressure on schools to keep reinventing the wheel and jumping through hoops and focus on good teaching and learning.”

Agree with that, but there is no money to return schools to LA and reinvent the whole wheel yet again. Things need to be kept as is and just improved by cutting red tape and pressure on staff. There needs to be more focus on education rather than box ticking and the mental health of staff and pupils needs to come first. I do not really like the whole concept of reporting to some big higher authority like Ofsted. It is so essentially toxic male. They should be there to assist and help, not to lord it over schools.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/67dd2b17a18f580c277f7887/CWS_Bill_Policy__Summary__notes_as_amended_in_the_House_of__Commons.pdf

@twistyizzy
LEAs used to run all the schools in an area. Say 150 schools and the senior manager did not get paid anywhere near the £200 000 to £450,000 some CEOs of multi-academy trusts get paid. Not to mention roughly 10 other people at the trust earning £100,000 to £200,000. They set admin tasks and targets to justify their existence but the government should get rid of that whole layer of management that didn't exist before. To be honest it is a massive con.

I can't say that the economic picture that they inherited was particularly impressive nor that we should be extrapolating from what are in fact quite tiny fluctuations in a pretty shitty looking graph?

Government borrowing was lower, bond market more healthy etc.
Under Labour we are almost at 100% of borrowing against 100% GDP. That is completely unsustainable and next step is IMF bailout as per Greece

Everyone should be worried about that!

When I left my last school (state), they had
1 HT
1DHT
and 5 AHTs
Just below them there were 4 non descript Leadership jobs.
Then HoDs
All putting their own version of pressure on the teaching staff.
Plus a Bursar, Office manager, and a buildings manager (Janitor/caretaker)
A ridiculous number of managers for the size of the school.

Has that been released today?