Category: #ToryEducation

#ToryEducation

Physical Education teaching declines in England after Tories slash funding

From The Observer: A study by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) thinktank has found cuts in provision and funding of Physical Education across English schools.

The report says: “PE has been reduced in schools across England, with a 5% reduction at key stage 3 and a 21% reduction across key stage 4 reported between 2011 and 2017. This is despite the noted benefits of physical education – not simply on physical development, but also through promoting healthier lifestyles and helping to enhance people’s cognitive and social skills.”

The report adds: “Funding for physical education – supposedly coming from the sugar tax revenues – was reduced in 2017 from £415m to £100m, to part fund an increase in the core school budget. The lost funding should be replenished, potentially funded by an expansion of the sugar levy to other drinks and confectionery with high sugar content.”

[Read full article on Observer website: “Austerity to blame for 130,000 ‘preventable’ UK deaths – report”]

School in Stockport to close early on Fridays for lack of funding

From The Guardian: A state school in Greater Manchester is to close early on Fridays from September and charge parents who cannot pick their children up at lunchtime, in what teaching unions said was a sign that schools are “at absolute breaking point”.

Vale View primary in Reddish, Stockport, is believed to be one of at least 25 schools in England to take the drastic measure of shortening the school week in order to cut costs.

Statutory pay rises had led to a £100,000 budgetary black hole and the headteacher said she was already making “double-figure” redundancies out of a staff of 90, Hannah said. Reneging on the early Friday closure would lead to more layoffs and bigger class sizes of up to 40 children, she warned.

From September, classes will finish at 12.45pm each Friday. Parents who will not be able to pick up their children early will have to pay £3.50 per child to cover the costs of an after-school club.

Governors said they had already cut almost £400,000 from the school’s budget since January 2017. Art therapy is due to stop in July, saving £9,500, and support for speech and language therapy has already been reduced by £16,000.

The school has saved a further £50,000 by cutting subsidies for school trips, £40,000 on support for pupils sitting their year 6 Sats exams, £100,000 on resources and £136,000 by not replacing teaching assistants when they left or retired.

[Read full article on Guardian website…]

Thousands of schools struggling financially as government fails to fulfil promises, NEU claims

From the Morning Star: Thousands of schools are struggling financially because the government has failed to live up to funding promises that were already “woefully inadequate,” a teachers’ union claimed yesterday.

Education ministers have not even matched past promises on funding that were already not good enough, new analysis by the National Education Union (NEU) shows.

Prime Minister Theresa May and Education Minister Damian Hinds promised last year that “every school” would receive a cash increase in their funding as part of a “new national funding formula” that would protect the funds of additional needs schools but would also be conscious of the financial pressures “regular” schools are facing.

However, government statistics released on December 17 show that this promise has been broken for 25 per cent of all primary schools and 17 per cent of all secondary schools. Overall, 4,819 schools received either no cash increase or suffered a direct cut to their funding, despite the fact that the costs of maintenance and equipment at schools have shot up dramatically.

On May 23 during Prime Minister’s Questions, Ms May claimed that “the new national funding formula is providing for a cash increase for every school in every region, as well as protected funding for those with additional needs.”

[Read full article on Morning Star website…]

Missing special needs support ‘a national scandal’

From BBC News: Thousands of children missing out on support for diagnosed special educational needs in England is a “national scandal”, Ofsted has said.

There are 2,060 children in 2018 who have education, health and care plans (EHCs) setting out their needs, but who receive no support at all.

Some parents said a child is only assessed when they are excluded.

Ofsted chief, Amanda Spielman, also raised the issue of children disappearing from education: “Too often, children who have been assessed still do not receive the services they need.” She uses her annual report to expose what she describes as a “bleak picture” of too many children “failed by the education system”.

The report raises concerns about support for the 1.3 million pupils with special needs.

She says between 2010 and 2017, the number of children with a plan designating their needs, but who received no provision, had increased fivefold.

Last month, representatives of local authorities told MPs of the funding problems they face in their high needs budgets.

[Read full article on BBC News website…]

School cuts: new £4.5bn pensions bombshell

From HuffPost UK: Austerity-hit schools could be facing an eye-watering £4.8bn cuts bombshell if the government doesn’t fund a planned pension contributions hike.

Headteachers will be left with no choice but to slash spending on “the absolute basics” if Chancellor Philip Hammond does not plug the four-year shortfall at next year’s spending review, Labour has said.

[Read full article on HuffPost UK website…]

Schools impeded by a ‘three-headed dragon’ of difficulties, headteachers warn

From the Morning Star: Teachers face having to fight a “three-headed dragon” of workload, accountability and insufficient funding that turns teachers’ jobs into a “nightmare,” the National Association of Headteachers (NAHT) has warned.

The union’s president Andy Mellor urged the government to be more aware of how the pressures combine to form a barrier to recruitment and retention of staff.

Speaking at the NAHT’s Primary Conference in Birmingham, Mr Mellor said: “On a good day, teaching is the best job in the world. The trouble is, there are not enough good days.

“As a result, too few graduates are choosing teaching as a career and too many experienced professionals are leaving the profession prematurely. […]

“Nine out of 10 primary and secondary schools are facing real-terms funding cuts. An overhaul of the way Ofsted plans to inspect schools is being rushed through. And workload has never been higher, thanks to year after year of government changes.”

Nearly 80 per cent of school leaders in the NAHT said that they found recruitment to be a struggle last year and 67 per cent said their staff left for reasons other than retirement.

[Read full article on Morning Star website…]

Squirming Tory minister Damian Hinds cornered on TV over his claims about school funding

From the Daily Mirror: Squirming Tory Cabinet minister Damian Hinds was cornered on live TV today over his claims about the “extra money” going into schools… BBC interviewer Andrew Marr pointed out that “real terms” funding per pupil since 2010 has in fact been cut.

[Read article on Mirror website…]

Schools face cash squeeze as £1.7bn a year has been cut since 2015

From the Morning Star: School budgets in England have been cut by around £1.7 billion a year since 2015, Labour analysis of a Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) report reveals today.

Annual spending on schools would be higher by £1.7bn in 2019-20 than the amount allocated by government if funding per pupil had been maintained in real terms over the past three years, according to Labour’s analysis of the data.

Shadow education secretary Angela Rayner, who will be visiting a school in Yorkshire today, has criticised Chancellor Philip Hammond’s one-off announcement of £400 million in the Budget so that schools can buy “little extras” was “downright insulting.”

Mr Hammond suggested that the average school could use it for building maintenance and equipment like a “couple of whiteboards,” but it cannot be used on running costs and staffing.

[Read full article on Morning Star website…]

Teacher crisis hits London as nearly half quit within five years

From The Guardian: London schools are in the throes of a growing crisis in teacher retention, with figures revealing that more than four out of 10 quit the profession within five years of qualifying.

Schools across England say they are struggling to recruit and retain staff, but the problem is most acute in inner London where just 57% of teachers who qualified in 2012 were still working in the classroom by 2017.

According to new analysis of government figures by Labour MP Matthew Pennycook, of the 35,000 newly qualified teachers (NQTs) who started teaching in the capital since the Conservatives took power in 2010, more than 11,000 have already left.

Retention rates have deteriorated year on year since 2011. More than a quarter of teachers recruited to London schools in 2015 had already left the classroom by November 2017 and over a third of new London teachers now leave within four years.

[Read full article on Guardian website…]

Sixth form and Further Education funding has fallen by a fifth since 2010, says IFS

From The Guardian: Funding for school sixth formers has fallen by more than a fifth in the past eight years amid declining investment in post-16 education, according to an authoritative study.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) report said funding for sixth form and further education (FE) students has been been cut “much more sharply” than any other area of education, with spending per sixth form student down 21% since its peak in 2010.

FE has also been hard hit, with an 8% cut in real terms since 2010/11 – and from a lower base than sixth forms – resulting in course closures, job losses and cuts to student support services. There are also concerns about the capacity of the FE system to deliver government reforms in the absence of additional funding.

[Read full article on Guardian website…]

Government accused of ‘total failure’ to widen elite university access

From the Guardian: Ministers have been accused of a “total and abject failure” to widen access to top universities for disadvantaged students, after analysis by the Labour party found the proportions attending Russell Group universities had increased by only one percentage point since 2010.

Separately, research by a group of Labour MPs suggests pupils from towns are less likely to attend university than those from London, with a nine percentage point gap between pupils from London and the rest of the country, and a 20-point gap between those from low-income families in the capital and in towns.

Labour said the Russell Group, which includes Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, University College London and Imperial College, had failed to recruit students from neighbourhoods where few traditionally enter higher education.

The party’s analysis of the Higher Education Statistics Agency data found the proportion of students from those areas had increased by one percentage point across all Russell Group universities to 6%, less than half that at non-Russell Group institutions.

Labour said it was clear the Department for Education would not reach the target set in 2013 by the then prime minister, David Cameron, to double the proportion of university entrants from disadvantaged backgrounds by 2020.

[Read full article on Guardian website…]

Creative subjects being squeezed, say schools

From BBC News: Creative arts subjects are being cut back in many secondary schools in England, a BBC survey suggests.

More than 1,200 schools responded – over 40% of secondary schools.

Of the schools that responded, nine in every 10 said they had cut back on lesson time, staff or facilities in at least one creative arts subject.

[Read full article on BBC News website…]

Theresa May Revives Grammar Schools Plan With £50m Boost

From HuffPost UK: Theresa May has prompted anger after reviving her flagship policy to expand grammar schools by handing them £50 million to increase places.

Lifting the ban on creating new grammar schools was a key part of last year’s Conservative manifesto – but the proposals were dropped in the wake of May’s election humiliation.

Under fresh plans by Education Secretary Damian Hinds, however, tens of millions of pounds are to be pumped into creating more places at selective state schools.

The controversial move comes just days after the Office for Budget Responsibility said the cost for a planned 1% pay rise for teachers could only be met by heads “squeezing non-pay spending and by reducing the workforce”.

A poll by the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) in March also showed more than a third of school heads have already cut teachers or teaching hours due to the Tories’ funding squeeze.

School leaders, unions and the Labour Party have lined up to slam the decision to resurrect “the grammar school corpse” with “scarce” new money, claiming the model stoked inequality.

[Read full article on HuffPost UK…]

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