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.

How expensive do people think that x-boxes are that not having one would enable you to pay for private school?

'Extras' implies that everything else is already covered and this is for treats. The primary school I work at is not replacing TAs as they leave, will be cutting even more next year and may have to go down to 6 (large) classes next year as we can't afford a 7th teacher anymore.
And the roof is leaking.

Final salary pensions do not exist in any other workplace except the public sector.
And they don't in most of those employers, but where they do, the employees have paid into them. And the money they paid in has been invested.

noble what my dad said makes sense. When he went through school there were well over 20 small private schools in the area (Wirral, NW). In the 1980s this had shrunk to about 10. Today there are 3, Birkenhead School (which is now co-ed), Kingsmead and Avalon. St Anselms is funded by the Catholic Church and LEA grants. Avalon is primary years.

There are just as many DC, far less parents paying for their education privately therefore of course the burden on the taxpayer is going to be higher.

drspouse What is paid in is nothing close to what is paid out. We are self funding our own retirement. We must save at least 15% of our income to ensure we have enough.

There are more children in some areas but less in others (as they have become more like retirement areas). So you don't know if there are more children.
And you don't know the size of the schools. Small private schools are rarely viable any more because state schools are better; it used to be that a very large number of state school pupils expected to leave school at 16 on the dot with no qualifications. More state school pupils have qualifications now.

Church schools that are maintained are state funded. Not church funded.

Or your dad could look at the data.

Actually, pupil numbers are increasing as the population increases, so the cost of educating them will increase, but that’s nothing to do with private schools.

If you think that the country can afford to not educate its children then I’m not sure where you think the next generation of skilled workers will come from.

What is paid in is nothing close to what is paid out.
This is different in different schemes. Some are fully funded (all paid for by employees and employers). Some are funded from taxes, and some are a mix.
For example the Local Government Pension Scheme is entirely funded by the employees and employers.

Having a decent pension is the trade off that people make for the lower salaries paid in the public sector. If you don't want to pay people a decent pension, then you need to increase salary or people will move to the private sector.

The employers get their money from the government or from council tax. That’s the rest of us paying however you dress it up! The employee contributions are very good value for the return of the index linked pension.

Getting back to the topic, I think the chancellor was particularly stupid in his choice of words. We also know the bulk of the money has gone to the NHS so be pleased about that. There will have to be a sustained huge tax take to pay for it all and also be aware borrowing will have to go up if Brexit is grim.

We also know the bulk of the money has gone to the NHS so be pleased about that.

Will believe it when I see it. Hopefully they're not still relying on the non existent Brexit dividend!

Teachers need to come out on strike again. I would support this wholeheartedly.

@Thisreallyisafarce

It's green for growth, dahlinnng (budget probably just fall short for that, though!)

I think the chancellor was particularly stupid in his choice of words

You can see where he got his phraseology from though - half the PTAs in the country raise funds for "the little extras".
I could link to hundreds of PTAs using these exact words, but here are just a few:

www.camphillboys.bham.sch.uk/pupils-and-parents/afs/
www.nightingale.hackney.sch.uk/web/friends_of_nightingale/142250
www.allsaintsce.lbhf.sch.uk/page/?pid=81

I never said more shouldnt be spent. All I am saying is that many more parents used to pay for their children to be privately educated. The church schools used to be fully funded by the church, not by the taxpayer. Over the years that has changed and today they are fully funded by the taxpayer. The fact is that the government have never had such a huge number of children to educate. Keeping them in school to 18 and more people going to university is extremely expensive.

As to pensions, I don't have a problem with a government employee having a final salary pension but don't complain at the same time that salaries are too low. They are low because of the benefits and because employers expect extra hours of work without paying for it. The contributions made by the employer are fully paid for by the taxpayer. The contributions made by the employee are a small fraction of the total cost of their pension plan. With returns so low for the past decade it's going to be a nightmare funding these pensions in 10-15 years because the asset pool is going to fall short. It will be the employer who is responsible for making up this shortfall not the employee.

I don't have a problem with a government employee having a final salary pension

Great. Can we have one then please?

Did you actually look at the table of the percentage of pupils in private education? It’s actually rising.

I'm actually someone who doesn't mind potholes. I call them Gods speed bumps. You can't speed down the road when you have pot holes everywhere.

I think it would make much more sense to use any funds available on primary and secondary education as well as targeted tertiary education for areas with shortages (NHS clinicians). It's called an investment in human capital. It pays off every single time in more ways than money.

Clav if the government is taking on the role of the PTA in paying for ‘extras’, then who will be taking on the government role of paying for the dull stuff like teachers?

Noble it's only increasing because the private schools are full of foreigners. It's insane that all the local boarding schools in my area that have remained open are full of Russian and Chinese DC with a few British DC thrown in, normally fully paid for from the fees of the foreign DC.

Private day schools are not doing great outside of London. Looking to move back we pretty much had the pick of schools to send our DC to.

The private school "idea" is bonkers. But I must admit I am often appauled at how much parents begrudge putting their hands in their pockets to help support their children's education. Ds's secondary, which specialises in technology, asks for an annual £20 donation for materials for DT subjects. For that, in Y7, they got to make and bring home a candleholder (metal), wooden pencil case, wooden pinball machine, pottery mug, nightlight, cushion and apron. Nevertheless, the rate of complaining and non-payment is huge.

Surely it is in the state's interest to have an educated population to provide the professionals, workers and good citizens of future generations? If we don't provide a good education to the poorest/most vulnerable, it is surely likely that crime/anti-social behaviour will increase (as will the long term burden on the tax payer).

If we want a fair, equal and productive society, relying on parents to educate their own children is madness.

It's also a fallacy to compare the role of the government with the role of a PTA, who really should only be funding non-essentials- although I know in a lot of cases they don't.

As a current PGCE student, the chancellor's comments really got my back up! The promised money will work out at about £40 a pupil in my current placement school. What will that actually buy? And it's just a one off payment, so any consumables will soon be used up!

My placement school is actually just about managing in terms of classroom resources (at least in my subject). What it needs is more funding of staff, especially TAs, support staff and cover teachers. At the moment, I believe they are hanging on to teaching staff at the expense of all of the above!

We were recently shown a piece of video in uni regarding behaviour management- the video showed a bottom set of 8 children. No-one on my course is currently placed in a school where they can afford to have a bottom set of 8- it's usually closer to 16.

You would think they’d want an educated work force, but historically the conservative governments haven’t really got behind that idea, Lady.

Since we have universal free education, it’s difficult to see what the benefits of chronically underfunding it are at this point though.

My placement school is actually just about managing in terms of classroom resources (at least in my subject). What it needs is more funding of staff, especially TAs, support staff and cover teachers. At the moment, I believe they are hanging on to teaching staff at the expense of all of the above

I disagree - I think it's much better to spend the money on teachers than support staff. In the private sector, classes of 24/25 are quite common for middle and top sets up to GCSE - no TAs, but subject specialist teachers taking the class.

Barbarian because it isn't just £20-the bills we pay to ParentPay are insane-tech materials,science books,geography books,PE lessons,field trips,language books,English books.......I pay a monthly fee on top.State grammar in underfunded area.We've lost our school library and there is no money for anything. Books in an awful state.

We have 3 children!!

Meanwhile in Hammond's area which clearly gets extra funding his local schools are apparently greatful for their little extras.It's insulting and outrageous. None of us are going to benefit from tax cuts if we are propping up the education system.

Lost