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Original poster

School budget

173 replies

Fangsalot89 · 11/07/2021 17:22

Does anyone know if you can request to see a breakdown of the school budget by department? It’s a particular dept I’m actually interested in.
The school website doesn’t show this and I wasn’t sure if it’s something that’s well out of bounds for a parent to ask to see.
It’s a CofE state school rather than private.
Thanks

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DistrictCommissioner · 13/07/2021 12:17

@Fakenham

Is it swimming? There is a school near us that asks for a contribution towards swimming even though it's a PE requirement.
Our school does this too - it's controversial every year, and I just got the email about it... sports premium is being used for the transport, school budget is paying some of the lesson cost, & parents are paying £40 per child for 10 weeks lesson.
CovoidOfAllHumanity · 13/07/2021 12:19

I am honestly worrying now that it's our swimming pool OP is objecting to (probably just paranoid) It was 100% not funded out of the school budget at all. We'd have had to save and fundraise for the next decade to achieve that.

We did used to charge parents for transport to swimming because it's really expensive to hire the pool, the lifeguards, the coach, petrol etc. We are allowed to charge for the transport although not the activity itself. We also had to limit swimming to the bare minimum curriculum requirements because of the costs. Plus the transport time ate into other lesson time.

Having the swimming pool will save parents having to contribute, allow us to widen access and eventually generate an income for the school in hiring it out which will be reinvested.

It's this kind of stuff that schools will increasingly have to do as education budgets just get squeezed and squeezed. We'll need to be clever at fundraising, grants, charities and commercial opportunities.

ineedaholidaynow · 13/07/2021 12:26

@CovoidOfAllHumanity who paid for your swimming pool? One of our local schools has a pool but it will cost in excess of £100k to refurbish, so normal fundraising isn't going to touch the sides for that amount.

DistrictCommissioner · 13/07/2021 12:26

@CovoidOfAllHumanity are you a primary school? I would love our school to have a swimming pool - could use it for income generation as you said, & we are in a coastal location so really important the kids learn to swim well. Funnily enough our school did have a swimming pool, but it was filled in during the 80s... I heard on the R4 the other morning that 50% of kids leave school unable to meet NC requirements in swimming...

oldwhyno · 13/07/2021 12:41

You can look up the CFR here:

schools-financial-benchmarking.service.gov.uk/

It probably won't give you the level of detail you're after though. Best bet if you're interested in that sort of thing is to enquire about becoming a school governor.

espresso14 · 13/07/2021 13:03

At a tangent, but I wish school swimming was reconsidered, in some areas many children already have weekly lessons from a young age, and in others, nothing at all. It's so expensive for schools, and you can't take a complete beginner to competent 25m in the space of a term. The responsibility should be for Swim England to target areas where there is low uptake of lessons, or some other measure and take the burden off all the individual schools struggling. It's Swim England who campaign for school swimming, and they get Lottery money from high levels of swimming participation.

CovoidOfAllHumanity · 13/07/2021 13:05

A local private swimming lesson provider refurbished ours and the deal is that they get free use out of school hours until we have paid them back. If it doesn't work for them and they back out we are not liable we just get it for free but they were confident that it will pay for itself and be a popular location for them. They did one with another school before that I saw in the press so I approached them and they bit my hand off as it's a popular location.

Not sure building it from scratch would have been affordable but a full refurb from unusable outdoor hole in the ground to an indoor facility with changing rooms has worked well.

Before that I also looked into getting a Sport England grant which looked possible as long as you could show community use outside school hours but the application process was tortuous. We'd have needed things like a local swimming club and exercise to music groups etc in board to show a benefit to the community. The more deprived groups we could shoehorn in the better. In the end the commercial company was a lot easier to get money out of!

DistrictCommissioner · 13/07/2021 14:10

@espresso14

At a tangent, but I wish school swimming was reconsidered, in some areas many children already have weekly lessons from a young age, and in others, nothing at all. It's so expensive for schools, and you can't take a complete beginner to competent 25m in the space of a term. The responsibility should be for Swim England to target areas where there is low uptake of lessons, or some other measure and take the burden off all the individual schools struggling. It's Swim England who campaign for school swimming, and they get Lottery money from high levels of swimming participation.
heading off on your tangent, but I agree. My DC, who will be in Y5 in Sept, will be having swimming lessons this year. The email home from school stressed that private swimming lessons aren't the same as national curriculum focus on water safety etc, but I'm still not convinced that it's a sensible use of resources for them to be taking my child swimming - he currently swims competitively, and does surf life saving.
Original poster
Fangsalot89 · 13/07/2021 14:32

@CovoidOfAllHumanity You’re being paranoid. It isn’t anything to do with swimming at all. That scenario is so sad that schools have to subsequently beg for funds from parents on something like that.
No, this schools expenditure was 100% not mandatory and I’ve since found out it wasn’t funded by a grant.

OP posts:
admission · 13/07/2021 16:08

Again I make the offer of talking to you privately to try and help stop the level of speculation over this post.

Original poster
Fangsalot89 · 13/07/2021 17:16

@admission Ok thank you and when I get a minute I will but I’m still responding to other people which a private conversation wouldn’t solve to them.

OP posts:
Noterook · 13/07/2021 17:22

Submit a freedom of information request, they'll hate it as its extra work, but they have to have a good reason for not replying (usually to do with security etc), and they have a time frame to reply. If you think it's a big purchase that may have been contracted for, it should be available online due to transparency laws but it would have to be above threshold so thousands.

Theworldisfullofgs · 13/07/2021 17:29

I'm a primary school chair of governors. I'll happily talk to you about budgets. I know ours backwards as there is v little, if any wiggle room.
If you contact your CoG I'm sure they'll talk to you about it.

Birminghambloke · 21/07/2021 05:21

Why don’t you just ask the Headteacher? It may be a simple narrative around how this expenditure was funded.

I sense the issue is parents finding things like stationery and then seeing a large purchase? Just ask and see what the response is.

Iggly · 21/07/2021 05:32

If you’re concerned then go to the governors. There should be a parent governor. That’s what they’re there for.

Feenie · 21/07/2021 09:54

No, it isn't.

Original poster
Fangsalot89 · 21/07/2021 10:30

@Feenie
“No it isn’t” ….what are you referring to?

OP posts:
Feenie · 21/07/2021 11:22

The sentence immediately preceding my post - that isn't what parent governors are there for.

Original poster
Fangsalot89 · 21/07/2021 11:42

@Feenie There wasn’t a comment above yours that related to what you wrote at the time of me writing.
In fairness, while it’s not their role as such, it’s not a bad idea in terms of having someone to liaise with since the schools communication is terrible (but that’s a separate issue.)

OP posts:
CommanderBurnham · 21/07/2021 12:20

It is not a governor's role to liaise between school and parent.

OP, just phone the headteacher and ask for a word. Say that you're concerned about how that money was spent. If she has a reasonable explanation that you are satisfied with then good. If you are not, put in a formal complaint, following the complaints procedure.

The chair of govs will have to investigate and give you a formal response. They have a responsibility to make sure money is well spent.

Carrying out your own investigation will not give you the full story, and won't do anything for your relationship with the school.

Feenie · 21/07/2021 13:54

Confused Not sure how to help if you can’t see posts in time order?!

Post immediately before mine (and 5 hours before yours):

Iggly

If you’re concerned then go to the governors. There should be a parent governor. That’s what they’re there for.

Norestformrz · 21/07/2021 14:04

.

School budget
Original poster
Fangsalot89 · 21/07/2021 14:12

@Feenie My phone doesn’t seem to like mumsnet particularly so it may not have loaded the page correctly. It’s happened before but it’s not really an issue is it if someone just asks for clarification?

@Norestformrz
I’m not sure the point of the screen shot.

OP posts:
Norestformrz · 21/07/2021 14:40

It shows the post you couldn't see and gives a chronology just so you understand the response.