How are your school budgets looking?

[letseatgrandma]

Schools around here are really going to struggle next year. Loads of TAs have been got rid of at the next primary to us and we are not replacing 4 who are leaving/retiring at the end of the year.

Our school has no money for pencils, paint, photocopying, books or glue. PPA is being covered by doubling up classes or bunging a TA in there and justletting the children do golden time. It's so depressing.

The cynic in me wonders if turning all the LEA schools into academies and only opening free schools is paving the way to change the working conditions and the 1265 hours and have teachers working 8-6 to solve all the childcare dilemmas. Tell me I'm being dramatic and this is unlikely!!

As if we were't all miserable enough as it is!?

No, wouldn't be able to afford that! Out of department budget. But we weren't told that they'd doubled cost and loads of departments have no spent their photocopying budget and it's not even exam week yet.
One of our DH is leaving and not being replaced!

Really grim. No enforced redundancies (yet), but head's door is always open to anyone wanting to discuss voluntary redundancy. HoD had a very awkward meeting with SLT about buying new books for the new specs in September - the money has been 'found', but it didn't go down well. What a waste, when there was no real need to change anyway.

A few clubs run for some of our most vulnerable pupils have been cut and various other things. Depressing times.

Meant to add, part-time staff teaching music, drama and dance are under threat, with fewer of these subjects being offered at GCSE next year. Head wants to redeploy them - not sure what that may mean. However, we have taken on extra maths and English teachers as we are going from 6 to 7 form entry next year.

angels our school is quite big so it's a variety - we have 2 part time PTs who each do a day of McCrone cover, two other part time members of staff who do a day of McCrone each and Music and PE specialists who come in once a week.

I saw WDC changed their minds after sending out all the info about shortening the school week - I wonder what they'll do instead?

We generally don't find anything out til it's at breaking point. Although we were warned about printing budgets so I can see that there's going to be a lot more coming as they normally don't say anything.

Plus our school is merging in a couple of years, brand new school being built on our current school's land. So much money, but not the council funding it. Don't know what the staffing will be for it yet

Let's just say our situation is so dire that our bursar has quit!
We are massively in debt; department budgets have been slashed; we now have a personalised photocopying code so the head can check on who is using the copiers and how much they are doing; subjects have been culled and it looks like the heating will be shortened again.
Saying that, my head is seriously mismanaging the school. He's recruiting staff that we don't need and the amount that SLT get is disgustingly high. Yet he only pays the minimum he can for TLRs and will not progress your pay unless you do a significant over the expectation job. If you have threshold approaching, forget it!

I'm so glad I'm on maternity leave!

He's recruiting staff that we don't need and the amount that SLT get is disgustingly high.

This is what I just don't understand. If you're a head who is getting to the point where they can't afford pencils and they're having to turn the heating off and can't afford ink, paper or school books-what bit of you thinks, 'I know-let's advertise for a 4th assistant head and let's offer them £?????! salary' ?!

Exactly Redlock.
He's done it today with another department apparently. One subject is overstaffed as the hod is coming back from mat leave and doing 3 days a week. Currently there are 2 full timers in the dept so if all 3 are there they are over by 12 hours as it's only a small dept.
One of the full timers has handed their notice in. Now, rather than do what has always been done before and have me pick up the surplus hours (because it's my 2nd subject and I've always had at least one class from this subject on my timetable as there was always 1 or 2 hours over the staffing) the head is advertising a full time post.
Leaving the dept 12 hours overstaffed!

I'd happily pick up the hours needed to cover the understaffed hours. Especially as my dept is now overstaffed too and I would end up teaching things that I have no experience of! Idiot.

I'm a governor and it is dreadful. The LEA consistently get our intake figures wrong by a full class size, so we're resourced incorrectly.

The budget is tight this year, no contingency at all.

The teachers do an amazing job, and I'm concerned that they are being scheduled so much teaching time that they are forced to use their personal time to lesson plan, mark and give individual feedback.

All the teachers in our school teach, including the head.

Blimey what are you lot spending your money on? I am a Business Manager in a primary academy in one of the the lowest funded authorities in the country.
We have just set our budget for the year starting 1st Sept we have 11 classes with 11 teachers 14 TAs and one full time teacher for interventions.

My school is not an academy for a start. The school is in a new building and the mortgage repayments are horrendous. The majority of the budget goes on salaries and, quite frankly, to get good secondary school teachers in our LA you need to make them want to come and live and work here.

The school is in an area where there is very little deprivation and the percentage of pupils on free school meals is very low so our school gets much lower levels of funding than other schools in the LA. It is oversubscribed and the funding per pupil is much lower than the other schools. We can't lose any more teachers as it will affect the results and ofsted reports. We are struggling.

Deficit budget. TA redundancies. We can't afford the equipment to deliver the basic IT National Curriculum. We can't afford to replace the unsafe perimeter fence.

I'm in a non-academy faith school in a PFI new build. The mortgage repayments are £1 million a year and the building is already falling apart after 5 years (and was never fit for purpose in the first place).

Very difficult to recruit and retrain as very deprived area with many challenges.

Fairyliz to answer your question, it's due to a combination of lower pupil numbers after a RI OFSTED and appalling financial decisions by the previous Headteacher.

Same as Sparkle. We've retained all the staff but obviously the cuts are showing elsewhere. Thank you rory voters.

and the tory voters too.

Really dire - we are now on a rolling deficit reduction budget. A governor let the cat out if the bag at a staff meeting which has led to some staff leaving because they were worried about their jobs ( others leaving for usual reasons). If we could find staff to replace them they we would choose NQTs.

All ideas to save money gratefully received.

We have a school of 400 students and have 7 Assistant Principals.

But we are getting rid of LSAs, so that's helpful

That's appalling, Peacoat, how do they justify that to themselves??

i have no idea. They are rather smug (and mostly aged around 24) so I'm not going to ask. It is ridiculous though.

I am on maternity leave until Christmas but am SMT and know that we have not replaced 4 teachers and 5 members of support staff who are leaving. Books will balance until next Easter when we will start a deficit budget of £200,000 which will be 750,000 in 3 yrs unless we start making people redundant next Easter. Need to lose approx 8 more teachers or 12 support staff. Support staff will go first because we already have big classes 29-31 and 50+% Pupil Premium.
Government has hacked post-16 funding - we have lost £70,000 this year and it has not bottomed yet. Also, salary increases of 1% not funded although we have no choice but to pay them. MPs get 10%

We are a school of 800+ with one Head and 1 senior assistant head , 2 assistant heads and no deputy. V small SMT. Lots of support staff but our children need that care and attention.