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How can we survive?


As Chair of Governors of a small one-form entry primary school, I have just come back from a Finance & Premises sub-committee meeting, tearing my hair out and wondering how on earth I can make a difference to the appalling lack of funding for schools this government is providing.

2 years ago, as a new governor, with a brand new Headteacher and Deputy Headteacher, I oversaw a complete staffing restructure – actually make that 3 staffing restructures – in one academic year.  We had a forecast of being £750,000 in deficit within a 3-year period.  The reason being? A lot of children with SEND, equating to the need for more support staff, a lot of teaching staff that had been at the school for many years, all at the top of their pay scale and ever growing pension costs.  But most of all, while salaries, pensions and other costs increased, funding for schools remained static for very many years.  Indeed, two years ago, our staffing costs made up 96% of our total income.  The benchmark figure for schools is set at around 85%.

We took action.  We made many staff redundant.  We cut hours.  We restructured the timetable for teaching.  SEND children were not going to get the interventions that they needed but we, as a school, were not receiving funding for.  EHCP funding is a whole other issue.  We rescued our financial forecast, but there was blood, sweat and many tears along the way.

Today, right now, we have a balanced budget.  But lo and behold, the National Joint Council has just announced a 2% pay award for all teaching assistants which in turn increases the “on-costs”.  Also, we are to expect a compulsory 2% pay award increase for teachers from September.  Again, the increase in “on-costs” and an increase in pension costs all around.

Of course our educators absolutely deserve this… and more in fact.  But where is the money coming from to pay for it?

2 years on, looking at our 3 year forecast, we see that our staffing costs will be at 90% of income for the next year and 96% in three years time.  We are straight back where we started 2 years ago with NO further increase in funding and worse – it is reducing, due to the new “Fairer Funding Formula”.  Fair?

We have cut costs wherever we possibly can.  Parents are providing toys and equipment for children to play with at break times.  We are now going to ask parents to buy school stationery for us via an Amazon Wishlist.

I do not know how our school can survive right now.  In 3 years’ time, we’ll have another whopping deficit.  And apparently, we’re in a pretty good situation compared to other schools, due to the action we took previously.

The education system in the UK used to be acclaimed.  If action isn’t taken soon, I fear it will be infamous.

Surely we now all have to stand up, be counted and campaign for more educational funding?

I’m in.  Are you?

This story is from Brent. 

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TA support is being cut due to cuts.

My daughter is just finishing Infant school and has been brilliantly supported by a fantastic team of teachers and teaching assistants. The children in her class with SEN have had a fantastic designated TA and the class has had one for the mornings. My son is about to start the same school and while he will have a teacher and assistant in reception, due to cuts in Yr 1 and 2 they are now moving to have 2 assistants over 3 classes. I worry about the impact this will have on the support children get. I also worry that the previously well resourced nurture groups and extra support groups that my daughter and her friends have benefited from will no longer be funded. I know that one of the specialist reading support TAs who previously worked with children in small groups, will now be in reception as that is where full time roles are. This seems a waste of her training and a loss to children who need help.

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Headteacher resigns over cuts

I was a teacher from September 1980 until August 2017, with two short breaks for maternity leave. Despite moving up though the ranks, becoming a Head in 2014, I never stopped teaching, with the quest for outstanding teaching and learning being my passion. In many ways, the 9 years I spent as an AST were the most fulfilling, but I succumbed to headship because I wanted to influence T&L across a whole school; I adopted Steve Covey’s, ‘The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing’, with T&L being that ‘main thing’.

Unfortunately, as soon as I picked up the reins, I could see that the school was heading towards financial difficulties in the next academic year, due to cuts in funding and rising costs. Many may not know this, but a stand-alone Academy cannot submit a deficit budget without the threat of being put into financial special measures by the Education Funding Agency (EFA), so I had no choice but to take evasive action.

Whilst it was my strong belief that I should devote my time to leading T&L, I had to put the ‘main thing’ to one side and become a financial strategist, which is hardly what I trained for. Staffing is easily the biggest financial outlay of a school, so that is where I had to start. I wrote a 12-page ‘staffing restructure and deficit reduction plan’, which was no mean feat, and whilst its contents are lengthy and probably not interesting to many, I detail it below, because you need to be aware of just how many cuts I had to make, and how serious and unpalatable they were:

•            The number of planning periods per teacher per cycle decreased by one

•            The number of teaching groups in Years 7 and 8 decreased by one (thus larger classes)

•            The ‘extra’ teaching groups in the core subjects in Years 10 and 11 removed

•            The disapplication groups in Year 10, except for SEN pupils, removed

•            VCert music removed as a GCSE option for Year 10

•            Food technology removed as a GCSE option for Year 10 and removed from KS3

•            AS French removed as an option for Year 12

•            Art and photography taught together in Years 12 and 13

•            Workskills Springboard removed from Year 12

•            Departmental capitation reduced by approximately 10%

•            CPD limited to training for the new exam specifications only

•            Stationery ordered centrally, not by department

•            Work experience removed for the majority of pupils in Year 11 (only remaining for the few who would really benefit)

•            Business & Enterprise budget reduced

•            Alternative curriculum reduced

•            The equivalent of one full time post removed from the SLT team, and the portfolio distributed amongst the remaining SLT members

•            One food technology teacher post removed

•            All 4 Lead Practitioner posts removed

•            The fourth post on the leadership spine not undertaking SLT responsibilities removed

•            The number of TLR points per subject leader, and the number of non-contact periods per subject leader, to be based solely on the number of teaching periods delivered by the department (thus leading to a reduction)

•            TLRs for Thinking skills, Data, Business & Enterprise and Work-related learning removed

•            The TLR for Alternative Curriculum reduced from TLR 2 to TLR 1

•            The TLR for Exams reduced from TLR 2 to TLR 1

•            One science technician post removed

•            One food technology technician post removed

•            The administrative roles of 1) Cover/attendance, 2) First Aid/Administrator, and 3) Educational Visits Coordinator amalgamated into two roles

I cannot begin to explain how upsetting and disagreeable I found these changes to be; they amounted to a saving of approximately £410,000 and yet by the end of the following academic year, it was clear that we would have to cut more subjects at A-level and more staff, and that is when I decided I could not and would not go on. I felt that I would be condoning the government’s regime of underfunding if I continued to hack away at the curriculum and staffing still further, just to balance the books, especially as it struck me that it was likely to become an annual occurrence.

I was coming up to 60 when I reached ‘enough is enough’, and in that sense I was more in a position to ‘go’ than a Head in their 30’s or 40’s say, but I had been a single parent for 21 years by then, my two daughters were saddled with huge student debt (after completing 5 university courses between them), and I had an interest-only mortgage, meaning I would have to sell my house to pay it off, so my decision wasn’t without its complications.

But personally, it’s the emotional toll, not the financial one, that I feel most acutely. I ‘went’ at least 5 years too early, with so much  left to give.

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EHCP MADNESS!

My youngest boy was diagnosed with Autism in Feb of this year.  He is average in attainment but struggles massively with understanding social situations and regulating behaviour and emotions appropriately.  This creates a massive barrier to learning for him and puts him at a significant disadvantage to his peers.  Since his diagnosis, I have been fighting to get him an EHCP so he can get the extra help he needs to be successful and happy at school.  It’s been an absolute nightmare and the result is that I am now going to tribunal to get my son the support he needs.  School and the LA have not been able to support me whatsoever because of these cuts and it’s just disgusting.  My little boy deserves an equal opportunity to an education just like any other neuro typical child – he is a bright special boy and could just be an AMAZING adult, just like so many autistic people.  We are currently putting further and unnecessary obstacles in his path due to the austerity that this government is inflicting on our society’s most vulnerable people.  I refuse to sit back and watch my little boy’s mental health and well being, as well as his future, deplete in this way.  I will NOT have it and will NOT rest until my boy is supported appropriately….quite possibly at the risk of my own sanity as the stress of this fight is just so overwhelming for parents, carers and all the families of SEN children.  It’s not right, just or acceptable and this current government should be ashamed of this disgraceful, discriminatory behaviour.

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Spread Too Thin

I am a qualified teacher but have worked as a Teaching Assistant for the past three years in a mainstream primary. The biggest impact I have felt is the effect of cuts on the children’s experience and learning support. We no longer have specialist music or MFL provision, and the school counsellor, who used to come weekly to our school has had to go too. We are thin on the ground on MDSA’s and any illness or absence impacts hugely on how we are able to support children.   We have access to a field we share with another school, which we cannot use regularly at lunchtimes simply because we don’t have enough staff to spread the children across multiple locations at break.
Our school is unique (it seems) in that it has not had to make any cuts to in-class support staff this year, but this has come at a price.  And our leadership team has made it clear they are doing all they can to prevent that from happening, but cannot sustain this long-term. We have a mixed-ability intake with a high level of SEND, and extra funding for this support is sparse and hard to get. The journey families and schools go on to get the minimal amount of extra funding is convoluted and often unfruitful – assessments are denied, support services such as CAMHS and BHISS are grossly understaffed and underfunded, and even getting the professional advice required can take weeks if not months.
As a result, any existing TA support is driven to high-need children, with the vast majority of kids with ‘regular levels of difficulty’ often having to fend for themselves. Teachers and support staff often go beyond the remit of their jobs and contracted hours to meet children’s needs, and we are eternally juggling who gets the support and who doesn’t. It is often a heartbreaking exercise of sharing insufficient provision, knowing that you will simply not be able to help everyone who needs it.

Resources are limited to the bare minimum now. Apart from the narrowing of the UKS2 curriculum due to the results-driven syllabus, there is the element of lack of funds to provide the students with enrichment experiences, art and science equipment, topic resources and musical instruments.

It cannot go on.

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Hidden scandal of the erosion of SEND services

What follows is a personal story, but I am writing it is an illustration of what is happening in SEND services across the land. Last September I retired after 32 years of being a teacher, mostly in Local Authority SEND support services and special facilities. I took early retirement at 55 because I couldn’t tolerate the stress of working twice the number of contracted hours that I was supposed to work, due to absurd workload, and the stress of feeling that I was failing vulnerable children and their families.

This workload increase, and reduced provision for children, was caused by covering the work of other people whose posts had been “deleted” in response to government cuts (the loss of the Revenue Support Grant and the real terms diminution of the High Needs Block which LAs receive to pay for SEND services, special schools and EHCPs).

To make it worse, most LAs SEND support services have been marketised: schools have to pay for them – but from nothing!  With schools having ever reducing budgets they stop purchasing LA services, then more cuts are made to services, and teachers workloads increase, and the services to children and parents decline; and then the remaining services are deemed to be of little help by schools and parents, because they don’t have enough staff to do a good job any more.

This is happening across the land  – SEND services evaporating everywhere – and on the whole only the parents of children effected and the teachers in those services really know the size of the cuts and the size of workload the remaining teachers face.