With the dust now settled on that budget, those comments about the “little extras” and the supposed “end of austerity”, let’s take a moment to reflect.
Like most teachers, I found the words of the chancellor demeaning and insulting to our profession. However, what saddened me most was that the government appeared to lack a true understanding of what has happened during this period of funding cuts.
Frankly, it is beyond belief that the world’s fifth richest economy has one in five children living below the poverty line. According to the Child Poverty Action Group, these figures will only rise. In 2020, 4.7 million children in the UK are set to be living in poverty, which will be a 600,000 increase in six years. It will come as little surprise to teachers that children’s charity Unicef places the UK 24th out of 29 “developed” countries in terms of educational wellbeing.
Those of us who work in schools know how this presents itself: children permanently hungry, inappropriately dressed, unable to pay for curriculum trips and the rest.
Schools are left to pick up the pieces.
Throughout the years of austerity, all the public has heard from ministers about money has been about funding being “ringfenced” and budgets being maintained. There has been a procession of lies, lies and more lies.
Schools, staff and pupils are suffering. Too many good teachers have been lost forever to the profession; too many teachers, teaching assistants, speech and language professionals leaving or being forced to leave education. Since 2008, more than 100,000 TAs have gone elsewhere.
Results will inevitably dip and a generation of pupils will have lacked the support they needed and deserved.
When the chancellor offered the cash for “the little extras”, it was as if he was sticking his finger in the open wound of austerity that schools have been patching up for years.
And in the process of upsetting teachers up and down the country, he also demonstrated something that most teachers already really knew: this is a government that doesn’t really care.
Colin Harris led a school in a deprived area of Portsmouth for more than two decades. His last two Ofsted reports were “outstanding” across all categories
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