Got a question for the Secretary of State for Education, Gillian Keegan MP?

[RhiannonEMumsnet]

Hi all,

We’re pleased to tell you that later this week Justine will be sitting down with Secretary of State for Education Gillian Keegan MP to ask her Mumsnet users’ questions.

If you have a question you'd like answering, you can post it below. Please stick to the usual guidelines - one question per user, keep it civil, and if one topic is dominating, please don't continue to post what's effectively the same question or point (we'll be deleting questions that are repeated multiple times). We'll be limited for time so please do keep questions as short as possible so we can ask more of them - as always, we'll try to make sure we cover the topics that we know are important to Mumsnet users.

We'll be closing this thread at 5pm tomorrow, so please do get your questions in before that - and watch this space to hear the responses. If you'd like a reminder of the format you can see our interview with Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves here.

Thanks,
MNHQ

Education is arguably the most important commodity for individuals and society. When is your government going to acknowledge this and ring fence enough money to pay teachers a decent salary and to properly finance our schools?

Underfunding of SEN is allowing a generation of children to fail. When will you find SEN properly so children with suspected dyslexia, adhd and dyscalculia - to name a few - can be assessed by schools rather than parents having to pay for assessments if they can afford it?

Just calling@noblegiraffe over here...

My question.

I'm a parent and I can see that schools are short of money. What's the plan?

The education support report (which can be found here https://www.educationsupport.org.uk/resources/for-organisations/research/teaching-the-new-reality/) made the recommendation that “It’s time to decide whether schools are the front line of children’s services, or whether they are specialists in education”

Can I ask which it is and what changes are being planned to make this possible?

As a headteacher the current system of social care, SEND support (including health care) and education is broken. We need radical change to make this happen.

ps. Funding a pay rise in average across the sector doesn’t mean all schools are fully funded!!

i am a primary school leader, this year we face a deficit budget despite cutting teacher jobs to the extent we have no capacity for intervention, cutting support staff so there are no teaching assistant only SNAs and most of them are supporting 2-3 EHCP / high need SEN. We are cutting EAL provision, speech and language support and music instrument tuition. My incredible but already overworked staff team are going to have to stretch even further which will massively impact on their wellbeing and likely lead to even more leaving the profession.
We are not alone in this, I have seen headteachers cry over the stress finding is causing and other nearby schools proposing deficit budgets of £100s of thousands of pounds.
Educational standards will decline. What are the government going to do to bring funding back to levels that mean children get the education and support they need need and deserve?

Why is the government accepting the use of ‘support plans’ to force more experienced, and thus more expensive, teachers out of their jobs?

If you do not know what a ‘support plans’ is, then I suggest that you spend some time with some of the thousands of experienced teachers who have left, or plan to leave the profession, despite not actually wanting to.

Many schools are flouting the intentions of the School Premises Regulations 2012 and are making either all or the majority of their toilets into mixed sex cubicles with a mixed sex handwash area.

This has already been the direct cause of a head injury to a girl in a Coventry school as a boy kicked the toilet door in. Numerous other incidents of sexual harassment are being reported and these toilets are causing great distress to girls and some boys. Many girls in our school refuse to use them but there are no single sex toilets in the main school building as an alternative. Uti’s, dehydration and time off during periods is becoming more common.

The SPR is clear that boys and girls need single sex toilets from the age of 8 - why are schools being allowed to get away with installing mixed sex cubicles and calling them ‘unisex’ when they clearly are not providing the level of privacy afforded by a proper unisex toilet (a separate room with actual walls and it’s own hand wash basin)?

Please can you review urgently.

Why do parents have to fight for everything as the system is so underfunded? I mean, getting an EHCP is a battle, with Tribunal adding to the stress whilst trying to maintain a school placement that's breaking down and attempting to work. We all know that early intervention is key, but it all seems to be kicked down the line - from what I've heard those appealling now are getting Tribunal dates in 10 months time - that's far too long in a child's life to be waiting for an appropriate education.

Why isn't more being done to create suitable provisions for those who are academically able but struggle in a mainstream environment? My son, like many others, is too academic for our local special schools to meet his needs but may well struggle in the environment of a mainstream secondary. He's in a fantastic primary unit but I worry for his future as there are no suitable schools around us.

Ofsted inspectors are paid £335 a day (expenses included). Do you think that's enough to attract quality staff?

What do you envisage as the future of higher education? Do you think the current model is sustainable?

Are you concerned the ongoing industrial action will driver away overseas students who currently prop up the sector?

How do you plan to resolve the industrial action? Is increasing student fees to increase funds available for academic staff being considered? Or otherwise increasing funding to sector? Is something more drastic being considered e.g. replacing some of undergraduate studies with cheaper mass taught local/on line standardised curriculums?

Do you think reform is needed employer side, to prevent jobs being unnecessarily degree dependent?

When are the Government going to look at funding for Maintained Nursery Schools.
Our funding changed in 2017 when the single funding formula came in for Early Years and all Early Years providers received the same funding. So each nursery school received the same funding as a childminder- the additional ‘top up grant’ (which varies enormously across the country) is hardly enough to keep my building going, let alone pay for a head teacher, a SENDCO, qualified teachers and all the basic things a school needs.
We have all the responsibilities of a Primary/Secondary school with the same funding as a childminder. (No disrespect to childminders who do a fab job).
Maintained Nursery Schools have higher numbers of children with additional needs and higher levels of safeguarding- when are we going to be funded the same as schools?
there are infant and junior schools in my LA who are much smaller than our nursery schools but their funding is double!
it’s hardly focussing Early Intervention is it?

Following up on the question about EHCPs. Currently, our council are facing a backlog of EHCP paperwork - what are you going to do to ensure that this gets sorted?
Also EHCP funding is very often less than what the child needs. When is school funding going to be looked at properly?

Isn't the problem with education funding/teacher salaries/workload and retention down to the fact that most politicians simply do not use state schools?

If more did, we'd have a far better state system.

Do you feel the school curriculum prepares students for the 21st century? Fir example the changes to GCSE English Literature have made the subject inaccessible and dull leading to dwindling numbers if students taking it at A Level. The recent Year 6 SATs paper is another example of providing material which is not accessible to many.

Doesn’t she think that material offered to students should be challenging but within a real world context?

When Labour get in and add 20% VAT to private school fees, how will the state system cope with a sudden influx of children whose parents can no longer afford the fees?

Why are is your government now demonising those who stepped up and helped others the most during the pandemic: doctors, nurses, teachers?

Schools are required to be politically neutral. Despite this, the DfE have repeatedly funded political activist groups seeking not only the removal of the rights of girls to single sex sport, changing rooms, showers etc but also promoting the alienation of children from their parents. Schools are advised they can transition children in secret from their parents & some openly promote a political ideology that encourages children to believe their developing bodies are flawed and can be fixed with drugs and surgery.

Having ignored this for so many years, what will you now do to remove the influence of these activist groups from schools and ensure that schools follow the law and prioritise safeguarding over queer theory ideology? Thank you.

Why isnt there a proper career pathway for SEN TAs. Some of our most vulnerable children are taught almost exclusively by TAs with minimal oversight from a teacher.

A TA might be running an intervention group with children struggling with reading, carrying out OT or SaLT exerercises, taking challrnging children for movement break, supporting toileting of another. The job is varied and skilled.

Some TAs do lots of training to allow them to effectively support a range of needs but then they leave as the pay and conditions are so poor. They can earn more in a supermarket.

This has the impact of high needs children either not having the additional support they need at all or continuously being with a new person who hasnt yet had the experience /training to do the job well.

I am a secondary school middle leader. My Senior Leadership Team have told me that if a girl tells me she thinks she's a boy, I should affirm immediately and use a new name and pronouns, but keep the whole thing a secret from her parents. Do you agree with this policy? If not, what are you going to do about the hundreds of schools which follow this policy?

I would like to ask what the DoE position is on schools socially transitioning children without the knowledge of the child's parent/s. I have 3 questions and I would be grateful for an answer or any or all of the questions below:

Should schools have the ability to change school records with a new name of a pupil without a parent's knowledge and consent?

Should teachers use a 'preferred pronoun' for a child without a parent's knowledge and consent?

Should schools allow a child to use the toilet facilities and play in the sports teams reserved for the opposite sex?

I'd also like to share this webinar from Sex Matters with the Sec of State for Education. I hope it is useful.

What can be done about the rise in violence in classrooms? I'm in Scotland, but I imagine this is an issue throughout the UK post covid.

https://www.scotsman.com/education/violence-in-scottish-schools-risks-becoming-national-scandal-4148460

I work in a MAT and set budgets for a number of primary schools. We use the ICP (recommended by the ESFA) to benchmark our staffing, other costs etc and despite having appropriate staffing ratios the income and expenditure benchmarks are always red because the funding per child set by Central Government is too low. The funding per child varies across the country and ours is one of the lowest despite teacher salaries being set centrally. Teaching costs are our greatest cost, teachers should be paid more and these should be fully funded (and not just delayed which is the latest wheeze).

We have used our size to purchase centrally and share best practice across the schools to improve standards however we are in the position of setting budgets for next year and each school is facing a deficit of between £30k - £60k which we can no longer find as we’ve stripped it to the bone. The only thing is to reduce TAs which has a massive knock on effect for the children especially for those who require extra support. Main issues with funding are:

• funding per pupil is too low
• SEN funding is so difficult to get, takes a long time to evidence and appeal (and appeal again) and is often insufficient for the support required
• universal free school income is too low. In one school the cost of the meal (provided by the LA) is 60p more than the funding we receive so the main school budget funds the difference
• NTP programme is reduced to 25% funding next year. We don’t have the funds to make up the remaining 75% so most headteachers aren’t going to run it as they can’t afford it.
• Teaching pay increases haven’t been fully funded in the past so there is no reason to expect that the next one will be.

Are you going to fund schools properly, as a previous poster said, please don’t spout about £x million / billion going into schools as I deal with the finances of schools and see the reality of cut after cut each year.

My question - have you, or will you, read all of this thread yourself or will someone else read it for you and pick out questions that they feel they have good prepared answers for?

Please can you confirm that all references to gender and gender identity will be removed from the curriculum, and that all RSE will be based on biological fact.

How does the Government propose to fund free childcare for 9month - 3 year old children when it cannot adequately fund the existing 3&4 year old offer?