When Free Is No Longer Free

[weavermum]

All local authorities are having to make savings; I get that. In Scotland, where I understand that local authorities no longer have to ring fence their allotted education budget (happy to be corrected if this is not the case). Local Authority ( reasonable ok authority with very little social or economically deprived areas) would appear to have reduced the money spent on education supplies and services from £1.7M in 2007 to £275k in 2012. Head Teacher of my kids' school has her budget immediately top sliced so is currently working on approx £27 per child for the academic year for all materials (and that child's share of office equipment etc.). Ok, this I'm assuming is pretty representative up and down the country.
Parents and teachers step in. I guess from totally unscientific survey of friends, family and acquaintances teachers are stocking classrooms out of their own pockets to a substantial degree.
This is a local example but at least 2 of our local schools (including my kids' one) interactive whiteboards are funded in their entirety by parents, purchase, maintenance, replacement (each projector lightbulb is £80-£90 a pop, that's a lot of cupcake sales), not mention replacement of text books, reading schemes, library books, the list goes on. The PTA has moved on from buying the 'nice to haves' to the 'need to haves'. We are lucky I guess that parents are able to and choose to help do this and that there will be many other areas where this is not the case.

I get all of this but would like to know is this the same everywhere? Is there really no such thing as a free education? Are parents all over the country funding basic fundamental pieces of equipment necessary to teach children? Not just trips to local places of interest, the library, the science centre but maths books? Our school PTA spent more per child on supplies and materials than our local authority did. Does no one else think something's not right here? Why is no one shouting about this? What happens in areas where parents can't dig deep or not at all? Did I miss the national outcry that Britain no longer has a free education system?

I have a feeling that it is the same everywhere - certainly if schools need new reading books that often falls to the PTA now, new play equipment - PTA, technology - PTA, visiting groups for educational purposes - PTA.

Thx periwinkle ; not sure if it would be easier if LAs and central government just came out and said " you need to pay£X pet child per year (as is the case in Ireland) or if everyone stood up and said WTF, all political parties stop faffing around and pay up instead of dressing up a failing institution as a great institution. :(

Think I might be quite late to the party on this one but the whole thing just sticks in my craw: all political parties, regardless of whether or not they're in power in Holyrood or in local authorities (could be lab, SNP, lib dem or lab/lib dem/con coalition - I kid you not) witter on and on and on about the great Scottish education system whilst systematically reducing education budget (at Scottish gov level) then reducing further at local authority level. Don't know whether to feel supported or horrified that it's nation wide. Sing out other locations, I need an angry person to rant with.

What about schools that don't have a PTA? How do they pay for light bulbs etc.? Genuine question, as our last (English) primary had no PTA and while it was pretty rubbish on many fronts, it had new fancy playground equipment, interactive whiteboards, new reading books etc..

Or is this just a Scottish issue?

It's not the case here (outer London). The school I work at has never struggled- we are well equipped with up to date technology, reading books etc. All from school budget, not PTA.

My DD's school doesn't seem to have any problems either- the PTA is very active but money goes on extras like Christmas decorations.

I have no idea why there's such a difference between different LAs.

Don't know much about the funding arrangements in Scotland but in England there are massive differences between the amount of funding one LA gets from, another LA - it can be over £2000 per pupil. So the reality is that you are going to potentially get very different answers from across the country. The funding differences are historic and the reasoning for them is lost in time, though it is plain that the south east and London LAs are mainly the higher funded LAs. The coalition government have said they will introduce a new national funding formula that will address these anomalies, though how they will fund it is a major problem.
The other thing to say is that for many schools in England they are now in a different era where there is a need to look much more carefully at all expenditure and I suspect that you will see big problems with schools having to reduce staffing in the next few years.
I worry that too many schools instead of actually working within their allocated funding will just look to parents to fund things that the school should be providing, but because they are not controlling their costs appropriately ( and by that I mean level of staffing) have a financial shortfall.

The schools I have been involved with all have a significant amount of money donated from parents and raised through the PTA. They all have a low number of children who are on FSM, so they don't get to benefit from pupil premium or anything that has ever helped failing or disadvantaged schools.

If parents didn't help, these schools would be falling apart.

Outer London school: while basics are ok the fundraising money is for getting better stuff than just basics. We managed to get 30 laptops instead of 15 so no child has to share. We are able to build a new outside area with proper sun protection. More trips as they are able to keep the costs down as the school is prepared to pay more.

But these things are not 100% secure as the head never knows how much fundraising will bring in.

Thank you ladies, keep it coming. According to the research I've done (telcos with lovely civil servant in St. Andrews house at the education dept) the way it works in Scotland is by scot government determining the amount per pupil and awarding the same x nos. pupils for each local authority plus an additional premium for those schools with certain levels of social housing within the catchment and those qualifying for free school meals.

I don't know how schools without pta's manage. The PTA has already donated over £3k since the start of term in August this year alone! It turns out our LA is particularly grim when it comes to funding schools and it may be that there is an over reliance on parental contributions but this has only happened in the last 4 years.
Some schools in the local authority fully loaded and wanting for nothing but not sure what happens in terms of maintenance - our PTA on verge of taking out maintenance contract iro interactive white boards as LA wont so much as change or pay for a lightbulb and as not all classrooms have a blackboard without working interactive WB, teachers are limited in what they can do.

As someone who fundraises for the PTA, it wld be easier if we could paint how bleak the picture is but we are discouraged (actually forbidden by LA) from doing so.
For schools without active PTAs i don't know what happens? No reading books?- in neighbouring LA 7 yr old kids getting one book a month, when tech breaks it stays broken.
I get this is the state and financial circumstances we live in we but how can teachers teach if they're not provided with basic fundamental teaching equipment and books!
Perhaps we (as parents have become so desensitised to education being underfunded that's why no one's shouting about this?

Not the case round here.
Yes the PTA may provide some library books, but mostly it's very much want to have.
It supports a swimming pool, which isn't cheap, outside big play equipment, buying some outside huts (wooden gazebos I think they're called) for outside classrooms in the summer, supports a small wooded area including pond (ankle deep with a notice saying "warning deep water" ), pays for the coach costs for school trips so the cost to parents stays low... and other smaller stuff.
This is a small ~200 pupil school.

No PTA here and no demands for cash. Money raised by the school fair and one or two Mufti days subsidises trips and theatre visits. Ours is a very well equipped school with whiteboards in each class, an ICT suite, a class set of netbooks, a substantial library, outdoor equipment etc. It's in a high deprivation are so will get substantial pupil premium I imagine and has just been extended by two more classrooms that are also fully equipped.

Thanks again ladies, daft have tried li k and it doesn't cover Scottish schools but there's bound to e a Scottish gov equivalent, am trying to up hunt it down.

Jings, a swimming pool DeWe! I suppose being in the west coast of Scotland kids are wet enough....

It's not all about the amount of money that the school is given, it's how well the money is then used and some uncontrolable factors. A Head teacher is not necessarily capable of running a business, which is what a school is.
I have worked in a school and had to help my deparment budget go as far as possible. First of all the Head inherited his job, he was never up to the job and then proceeded to promote other equally useless Deputies. Other staff, like the headcaretaker inherited his job, exatly the same situation as the head happened.
So some departments had loads of money whilst others had next to nothing. Trying to save money can be hard when the Burser will only let you order from certain suppliers, not the cheapest place. I once pulled out of the school bins a quite new fridge that had been replaced because the office staff didn't want to clean the spilt milk in the door seal, it was much better nick than the fridges in the food classrooms rooms. I once raised £1000 from selling old equipment from my department, but have seen thousands of books thrown away. So much money was wasted.
Then the building was falling apart, concreate cancer, that must have cost an eye watering amount. I once heard the owner of the building contractors say he could charge what he liked for the work as we were a school :-( And as the Headcaretaker wasn't qualified for his job he didn't know we were being ripped off. The builders were in every holiday for years.
The school got the largest Health and safety fine ever, or for schools or something like that. The School had to pay a hefty part of it, and the LA passed their share onto the school. Yet again it was because a person who wasn't qualified to do the job had been given the job and it had ended in massive H&S breach and he now has less fingers than he did.
And finally corruption. One Head of Department was getting married, so she opened an acount at the local Department store, they sell everything, so noone checked up. She was getting married, yes her whole wedding came from the local Department store. The teachers in that department had to buy their own pens and paper for the children in their classes. And finally the school crumbled and the LA stepped in paid off the Head to leave and brought in a Superhead! WTF A few months ago they resigned from their current post as they had rather publicly been acussed of fraud, in court.

Oh my goodness, how the hell didthat happen? What a truly horrible horrible story. Please let that be the exception and not the rule.

I know our HT is shit hot with the budget but I think at the next level up there is perhaps a lack of scrutiny (Afterschool - not for profit run by parents) recently paid for a multi use games area in school at cost of £22k, the local authority's preferred suppliers cheapest quote was £40k. The cheap quote was from reputable commercial supplier used by national companies. No difference in quality or health and safety on site was just a case of "it's a local authority, no one cares enough to properly scrutinise quote" only this time parents scrutinised the quote, told the preferred supplier no thanks and got better value for money.

Why are there no consequences? Why is no department / audit office ensuring monies are spent well , fraud is prevented, why does education matter less now when it's so important. Surely no one would argue against education as being one of the best means of lifting pope out of education, or creating a balanced community. Why is free education being abandoned in some areas of the uk?

It will not be the norm at all but a school is like any other business, except one very important difference. They do not recive money from their customers. A money making company, MMC, has to work to survive. It has to make money to keep running, employees have to be profitable. If they are not then something must happen. In any company that does not make money, NMC, then has no simple test to assess employees usefullness. If a NMC fails to spot a poor employees and continues to do so repeatedly it will deteriorate and that's what I think happened over many years. If the majority of the NMC is good and deals with these problems then this wouldn't have happened. I have also worked for a good NMC.
People questioning things are always good. The playgound story does not surprise me at all, but is a good outcome.

Again Scotland is probably different from England but in England schools are slowly going through a process of moving from a educational establishment, where what the LA said happened, to one where the school is as scaredycat says a business. My primary school is a £1.3M business and my secondary school a £8M business.
Teachers join the profession to be teachers and are trained as such. Some find it easy to move through the various levels to become head teachers and take all the management, the financial budgeting and day to day finance issues in their stride, others really struggle. It is clear that today's headteacher needs to be a very different animal from say 10 to 15 years ago, when the backstop was always the Local Authority.
However there is also another layer of management that needs to stand up and be counted and that is the governing body of the school. They have the ultimate responsibility for setting an annual budget and for monitoring that the budget is being kept to. There is a process called SFVS (schools financial value standard) which is required to be done every year and should act as a starting point for being financially responsible.
Unfortunately like in any other profession, you cannot account for those that either deliberately or due to complete incompetence cause financial chaos in their chosen profession.

There are huge differences in how a school spends money. Some elements are out of the control of the school , eg lots of older, more expensive teachers, older buildings that leak heat, etc. Teacher costs are the big one though and schools the same size can have hugely differing salary bills. I know schools where raising much more than £1000 a year is a result ! This depends on where the school is and what disposable income the parents have. Poorer parents just do not have the money. I also think there is a correlation between poorly achieving schools and poor funding with no parental input. I always argued that schools in poor areas should be funded more generously. If you can raise thousands each year, then maybe you don't need the money as much as other schools. Just a thought.......

Our current head teacher is amazing at procuring, we've had a swimming pool and a new hall built, equipment isof high quality and the PTA funds go towards extra equipment and activities for children mainly.

The postcode lottery is alive and well with funding.

Thank you for taking the time to respond ladies

BlackMogul - your right and up until now it's been hard but doable to raise the money but over the past couple of years, we're raising less but being asked to spend more and what we're spending it on has changed from extras to basics. Currently 'outgoings' exceed 'income' - parents all tapped out. Schools with more affluent parents shouldn't be the priority at all but surely there should be a blueprint/ a minimum standard of equipment / txt books / teaching aids which should be met in all classrooms.

My understanding is that schools in poorer areas where the parents are less likely to be able to contribute to school extras through a PTA already receive extra funding the guise of pupil premium. I whole heatedly agree with this approach but in times where most people are having to tighten their belt often in response to government spending cuts it is unfair for schools or LAs to rely on parents to pick up the slack.

The catch 22 is either you and the teachers stump up money you can't afford and the LA will keep relying on you to prop up the system or you say "no way" but the system would have to crumble before anything is done about it, mean while your children are on the receiving end of it!

I personally believe it is the blanket policies and decisions made by people who have either never worked in the profession, or did so such a long time ago that they wouldn't recognise a school if the stepped in it, that are the issue. No-one goes to teachers (or doctors, lawyers or any other career they are trying to cut budgets on) and ask them where and how cuts should be made as they are branded as lazy and only out for their own gain!

I shall get off my soap box now

our PTA on verge of taking out maintenance contract iro interactive white boards as LA wont so much as change or pay for a lightbulb and as not all classrooms have a blackboard without working interactive WB, teachers are limited in what they can do.

Not as limited as you imply, an interactive WB can be used as an old fashioned white with the addition of a white board market pen.

An old fashioned projector can be used for powerpoints and costs less than £200 new.

Thanks Sashh, hope ths is being used where classrooms no longer have backboard, certainly cheaper than the quotes we received!

JammieMummy, you've hit the nail on the head, and I guess the reason for my post. Have to dig in and fork out or watch kids suffer (and staff morale get lower....)

I realise there is no immediate solution to this problem but couldn't but help but sigh at new call from central gov and local authorties to push and accelerate wifi in schools (as reported by papers today ) supported by Parent Council Forum. Those of us at the cake baking - face painting- Christmas cards making - coal face cannot understand the need for this when hardware which will utilise wifi is either not purchased , not wifi compatible or broken. FFS, does no one on these committees ever think sensibly and in a joined up manner about these things......

Tesco (as are other local businesses) is very generous to dd's school providing all sorts of items from food for breakfast and after school clubs, raffle prizes, school fair stall prizes, Christmas Concert raffle prizes etc etc all for the mention at events where they have donated. Maybe it would be worth exploring whether businesses local to your school would do the same