Headteachers got hot under the collar this week, and it wasn’t all down to the warm weather that has finally appeared - the funding crisis hitting their schools is also raising the temperature.
North West school leaders, for example, warned that they are falling into debt and risk being put in the unenviable position of making cuts that will have a “life-changing negative impact on a generation of children.”
This situation is being replicated elsewhere, as ASCL general secretary Geoff Barton explained. The funding crisis is forcing some headteachers to introduce larger class sizes and cuts to the curriculum, activities and school trips.
Schools are in such dire straits that many are using pupil premium to plug budget gaps, according to a survey by the National Foundation for Educational Research.
A weekend of action organised by the School Cuts coalition is set to highlight the school funding crisis to the wider public, with events planned up and down the country. Mr Barton set out his stall to explain why he will be taking part.
How timely then, that the Commons Education Select Committee this week launched an inquiry into education funding. The investigation will examine whether the government should have a 10-year plan for schools and colleges, instead of the current system of three-year spending reviews, and what resources are required.
Headteachers reminded of the dos and the don’ts
It’s one thing to do the job you have to do, but quite another to be asked to do things that are futile. Yet an ASCL survey revealed that hundreds of schools are being asked to provide evidence by Ofsted inspectors that is not in fact needed.
In case some of the duties they do have to fulfil slipped their minds, headteachers received a timely reminder from the Standards and Testing Agency (STA) that it’s up to them to ensure pupils sit their Sats next month.
The decision to remind school leaders that they have the final say on pupils sitting their Sats may very well have something to do with the fact that parents opposed to them had been happy to learn last month that their child was not in fact legally required to sit them.
One drastic way around the problem of testing in schools for parents is to take their child out of school altogether - an option suggested by Sir Ken Robinson, the renowned educationalist who argues there is currently too much emphasis on standardised testing. The idea of being out of school altogether no doubt appeals to teachers too sometimes, not least when the sun is shining outside.
