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?