More money for potholes than schools in the Budget

[noblegiraffe]

£420 million pledged to spend on fixing potholes. A one-off £400 million for schools to buy “the little extras they need”.

It works out at about £10,000 per primary and £50,000 per secondary.

FFS Phil, “little extras”? It’s proper funding that we need. Sure more glue sticks and board markers will be welcome, but it won’t bring back the teachers, TAs and support staff who have been made redundant, nor reinstate the GCSE and A-levels that have been axed.

Patronising pat-on-the-head nonsense.

I'm not a teacher but his 'little extras' comment gave me the rage.

Also, it’s a total lie that we are getting more funding because we have already been told to fund teachers’ long overdue pay rises from school coffers and pension contributions are going up. So in real terms headteachers will not have more money to spend on the BASICS (falling apart classrooms, paying teaching assistants, basic resources) let alone any little extras.

My bil teaches in a exceptional state school, currently it has a balanced budget, if cuts continue as they are it will go bankrupt in five years.

Just heard Hammond on the Today programme maintaining that he's sure schools would be very grateful for a couple of new whiteboards and similar. Yeah, because a whiteboard is a great substitute for a motivated and properly qualified teacher ....

Elsewhere in the interview he pretty much acknowledged that all departments bar Health would not see any real growth in the next spending round. Or maybe there would be more money for teachers. One or the other - he doesn't really seem to know.

How many headteachers marched on Downing Street last month and they’re still not listening? A new whiteboard is no good if there’s no teacher to write on it.

It’s crazy to imply that the chancellor doesn’t think education is important

His actions speak for themselves. His choice of words was appalling.

Oh, and the DfE have been caught out lying about school funding figures. Nick Gibb said ‘We are spending record amounts on our school funding. We are the third-highest spender on education in the OECD’

Except they included billions of pounds of university tuition and private school fees in their figures. www.tes.com/news/uk-stats-watchdog-investigates-dfe-funding-claims

The DfE lie and manipulate figures and insist there’s no problem with funding, with teacher recruitment and retention (‘remains an attractive profession!!’). This government has a terrible record when it comes to education and the suggestion that the chancellor thinks it’s important is laughable.

The primary school you linked to begging for toilet rolls converted to academy trust status in July 2017 with a budget surplus of £521,312. The last accounts for the academy trust (5 catholic primary schools and 3 pre-schools) show reserves of over £3.5 million, with £1.5 million cash in hand/in the bank. The opening sentence of the accounts review says that the trust is in 'a strong financial position'. The accounts also state that the school built an extension to the staff room and bought back the playing field it was leasing from the local council for £29,000 - but it cannot afford to buy toilet rolls.

And what about my school, Clav, and many others like it who have made teachers, TAs and support staff redundant? Are they secretly rolling in cash?

Who knows? It appears the one you linked to is misleading parents.

If teachers are being made redundant then I would imagine it's because pupil numbers at the school have dropped - or because a particular subject on the curriculum became unpopular with the pupils. Some schools had as many as 50 or 60 TAs - a cut back was inevitable.

My school is teetering in the edge of bankruptcy. We have made 14 TAs, the librarian and a technician redundant 2 years ago, and the reaching staff has been cut by 8 full timers inc 1 deputy head in the same time frame (natural wastage). Top sets are now routinely 33 pupils - most classrooms have 32 desks; bottom sets have grown from 12 to 16 or thereabouts . Non-contact times have been reduced, meaning that teachers have less time to prep and mark. My v mild mannered head marched last month. We can still afford loo roll though so guess we are all right.

Looking forward to something lovely with our little extras money. Some board pens perhaps, or maybe a glue stick.

Oh, and we now have 6 TAs for a school of 1600 pupils - hardly the 50 in the below post.

I’m not very up on my school finances, but I do know that there are non-transferable pots of money, so money spent on building work couldn’t have been used to hire a teacher, for example. I know you’re also aware that there was historically separate government funding for school improvement works. Kids at my school were always moaning about how the school had the money to build a new gym but didn’t have money to fix the hole in my wall that let the rain it. They didn’t understand that the school had applied for a specific loan that was being paid back by renting the facilities out to locals.

School funding has fallen. Teachers, TAs and support staff are being laid off. Courses are being cut. Resources are short.

And no money for SEND either. But austerity is over.....yeah right Phil.

If teachers are being made redundant then I would imagine it's because pupil numbers at the school have dropped

Try again. Class sizes have increased.

Yes schools are fucked but the display boards will look amazing on the way down

Well, the focus should be put back on fairer funding then as some schools have more than enough.

focus should be put back on fairer funding

My school isn’t in one of the direly funded authorities. Fuck knows how they’re coping.

Some schools had as many as 50 or 60 TAs

So in a primary school with a 4 form entry and one per class as an actual classroom assistant - that's 28 TAs.
You don't say if they are full time or part time but the remaining 22, if full time, can do:
12 1:1 for children with SEN, that's 4 per year in years R, 1 and 2.
And then assuming that by year 3 (HA) all of those who need 1:1 have either moved to specialist provision or have an externally funded TA.
So the remaining 10 are:
Covering prep time for every year - I think that's about 1 teacher to 2 years at 4 classes a year? So 3.5 teachers.
And the rest are either doing prep or part time cover throughout the school for children who need help with particular subjects (e.g. the ones who failed their phonics screening in Y1 and need extra time in Y2 - nationally that's 20% so in a school with a 4 form entry that's 36 children i.e. more than a full class).
Preparing materials for children who don't need that much help in class but need e.g. large print.
Physical help for children with mild physical disabilities during e.g. PE.
Calm down room for children who manage fine in the classroom generally but need breaks.
EAL support for children new to the country.
So those are all part time or temporary needs and will NOT be covered by e.g. EHCPs
Unless of course under 50-60 TAs you are ALSO covering those that are funded by EHCPs!

racer is correct. My father has talked about it for years saying my generation are going to have a very hard time with private schools being so unaffordable now. For his generation far more than 7% of school children went to private school. It was more like 30%. Also, the catholic and Anglican churches provided for a good 20% of school places. In his words, taxes have gone from paying for 50% of places to paying for 93% plus there is the additional complexity of special needs and other cultures that schools didn't provide for before.

IMO the biggest issue we have are the insanely high pensions taxpayers are burdened with. Final salary pensions do not exist in any other workplace except the public sector. I really do think when they talk about the salaries paid, it should include the monetary value of that extremely generous pension. A nurse making £25k a year sounds not so great. If you include the pension that 'salary cost' is at least £32k a year.

Your dad’s talking shit, Want2b.

Oh, and hahaha at ‘final salary pension’. Bore off.

Want2bSupermum
Perhaps your father was being area specific? Certainly my borough used to be 38% of dc attended private schools - but I haven't seen a percentage figure for some years.

Taxes aren’t area specific.

This notion that the taxpayer ‘can’t afford’ to educate the next generation is bloody stupid. Like they can afford not to.

Racecar we're struggling every week for food. What holidays and X Boxes?

woodhill, no, I'd rather spend that couple of quid on food, or save up for new pyjamas for the DC because theirs have got massive holes in.