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.

But everything’s underfunded! It’s not just education. Everyone is squealing. There is only so much to go round and the proposals from the Chancellor depend on the budget forecasts being correct. They rarely are. So what then?

In the private sector they often manage out or won’t take the pupils who need support. 24/25 in a class where you’ve removed all the children who might cause a problem is not remotely the same as have 36 in a class where some of the children will need 1:1 or 1:2 support.

Hmmmm Everyone is underfunded? Does this include the one billion to the armed forces?

I am not begrudging the armed forces at all, I am sure they are in as much as a cash crisis as every other public service. What really infuriates me is the constant lies that this government spins with regards to education funding. 'We have not cut funding to schools', 95% of schools answer, 'yes you have in real monetary terms'. Government, 'we have not cut funds' and so on.

Schools are on their knees and they are still not listening, what is it going to take for them to listen? Does anyone know?

In otber countries where the education system is well fubded it is still absolutely typical for parents to supply text and exercise books on top, plus payments for materials etc. Yes core education should be properly funded by parents should expect to provide cettain things for their children as well but there's a real take, take, take mentality nowadays.

God that was barely English. Apologies.

Can I just remind people again that the government lied about school funding and said that we were top three OECD countries, implying that the heads were making a fuss about nothing?

And they’ve been utterly slammed for their head-in-the-sand approach to the teacher shortage crisis.

They cannot be trusted on education.

Bollocks is there a take,take mentality.

Families are holding down both parents working just to afford housing. We're paying more and getting less in many areas.Many have got kids to get through uni which simply wasn't an issue before,higher food bills,older parents to support......

We're all doing our best,meanwhile the Tories piss about with Brexit and potholes.

Potholes can kill people.

The roads are seriously bad.

Some families Bookpile. But also we eat more takeaways, take more foreign holidays, pop our babies in designer buggies, have more cars/mod cons/Iphones than ever before but cant find £20 to buy school books for the 3 kids we chose to have.

Some families,not all by any means.Many are lucky to go camping. And actually considering how hard many families work and how much tax they pay shelling out over a grand a year on education basics on top is a tad annoying. Particularly so when your school is struggling to staff itself and the gov congratulates itself on austerity being over and tax cuts. Big whoop re their little extras,families are contributing more out of their own pockets for the basics.

Barbarian even those of us who can't afford it?

Barbarian I haven't eaten a takeaway in years, although I'm taking the DC to McDonald's tomorrow, I haven't even had a UK holiday since I was 42, I'm now 51, I've never owned a designer buggy, we don't have a car or iPhones, our money mostly goes on food, clothes for the DC if we can afford to replace them.

Hopefully this enormous contribution to DDs school will enable them to fix the leaking roof. To date this outstanding secondary has prioritised teaching! Go figure.

And it isn't just £20 so stop saying that it's 100s. Scroll through Parent Pay. Then there are the PTA fund raising bills for computers,minibuses...

Fine if that is the way it's going to be but the gov needs to own it,stop lying re funding and to cut taxes massively so we are actually better off instead of switching money from one to the other. On top of that they could stop frittering money on Brexit and actually fund schools properly. That way when we realise we have severe skills shortages kids can receive a decent education in order to fill those gaps.

Have you had your dc later in life moth? Sorry things are such a struggle

In my local large LA, 66% of schools are heading for a deficit budget by 2020.
In small schools this is 89%.
Rural schools are closing. In small schools the budget doesn't allow for staffing which is appropriate to the educational needs of the children. Ofsted expectations can't be met by a team of two or three staff.
I have no idea what will happen, can a school be bankrupt? Cuts to local authorities mean there isn't a fall back position whereby the LA can help with funding. LA's are facing massive cuts in budget and staff too.

Academies are claiming to parents that they are cost effective because they can share resources, yet can still afford to pay for an extra layer of leadership with a CEO.
The DfE is propping up some failing academies with huge direct payments.

This government is trashing our education system.

Rural schools just won’t try and work together. They could federate but they don’t. They could share a Head, but they won’t. C of E won’t work with community schools, everything is duplicated. Tiny schools a few miles apart can’t get round to working together. Of course one should close. If not, parents pay for the extra cost of keeping it open. There is no way we, as a nation, can have everything we want.

The armed services have been saying they are underfunded. Look what happened when they didn’t have the correct equipment in Afghanistan. We have no aircraft on our single aircraft carrier. You might be against wars, but as a cojntry, we maintain armed forces. We also have the police, local government, the NHS, care in the community, roads, rail network improvements, money for town centres and arts, overseas aid, the environment, power stations - what should we stop funding? Everyone constantly bleats about their own pet area of funding. If, as a country, we are not making enough money, we have to spend carefully.

Bubbles the government has wasted millions upon millions of pounds on UTCs and Free Schools that open then close within a couple of years. They didn’t cap academy CEO pay and are now surprised that loads are paying themselves well over the odds.

There’s money, it’s being spunked away.

Bubbles, yes some communities don't like the idea of working together, however we have lots of rural schools that are federated.
Federating doesn't always save enough though as the HT in a small school is often a teaching head, 0.6 or even 0.8. To federate and be a HT across schools there has to be a replacement teacher to make up the full time teacher equivalent. The difference between an experienced teacher ( to be onsite full time in each school) and a Head teacher can be as little as £3,000.
Some local schools are in federations of 3, 4 or 5 schools with one HT - an impossible job under OFSTED expectations!

In fact, one of my local rural federations - 4 schools is heading for a £104,000 deficit by the end of next year. ( whilst a nearby town will have a new free school)

There’s also the thousands of pounds that the DfE are throwing at people to train to teach with no requirement that they actually teach or teach in state schools once qualified. The ones that do end up teaching in state schools do not last more than a few years.

In the meantime absolutely no money is thrown at the issue of retaining experienced teachers. Even with the recent payrise, it was 3.5% for less experienced teachers, below inflation for experience.

My older 2 are nearly 30, then I have 2 in primary school woodhill. We were doing OK until housing benefit said DH had to give up his business and go on JSA, now he works part time and we're on WTC. He's in his 60s doing a very physical job and he really couldn't work any longer. Because he works 20 hours, I could only work 10 or we'd start losing money.

Do the older 2 still live with you moth? Sounds a real struggle and crazy if you work more you are worse off?

Sorry, I'm a Butterfly again! No woodhill, DD1's at university doing a PhD, DS1 lives with my mum. He's too ill to work, and is in the process of transferring from DLA to PIP.