Things are even worse that I suspected!

wigglebeena

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

The schools budget has not had any cuts. In fact, it has had significant increases over recent years.

If local administrators cannot manage their funds between schools, they should be sacked and replaced with ones that can, rather than expecting parents to contribute twice for something they have already paid for through taxation.

I never expected to be thanking the Kilted One!

Conrad

I don't mind helping with funds for my local primary. We all benefit hugely over the course of our lives from schools and the NHS. I would mind however if staff routinely have time off for stress and such like as I as a self employed indivdual have to soldier on no matter what.

thriftybabe

wymondham wrote: »

Almost certainly mismanaged. Schools often have apalling management in place in their own safe environment. Our school recently embraced the 21st century with parentmail - doing away with all paper/post correspondence. Unfortunately they still send home letters and use parentmail for fundraising 'spam' only - never had anything useful from this service!

The local council is saying there is a 2% cut in all schools in the area. They need to reduce their own budgets by £3 million. Our school too has embraced the idea of parentmail which is great and yes we do get the fundraising spam stuff too!

Mr.Brown_4

thriftybabe wrote: »

The local council is saying there is a 2% cut in all schools in the area. They need to reduce their own budgets by £3 million.

Labours new slogan - education, education, edu.

thriftybabe

lemonjelly wrote: »

thrifty, didn't most schools also run summer fayres, or christmas bazars & stuf to raise funds. Are the school doing these & writing to parents in addition? Seems to me schools have always been doing some sort of fundraising stuff through the years.

Yes they had Xmas fayre and the usual stuff like Mother's day stalls, bag packing etc! We have been trying to raise funds for Smartboards and an email was sent at the term asking for parents to make either a one off donation or a monthly direct debit to raise the funds. We ourselves put in a one-off donation in the hope it would help. They are now asking us to help out with cardboard, pencils, ink cartridges that we dont need! These are basic items. This really scares me what is going on.

thriftybabe

setmefree2 wrote: »

Thrifty in 13 years I have never been asked to donate a penny to my children's schools. Maybe it's just a rubbish head?

I have overhead her being talked by other parents especially those heavily involved in the school and it is not nice things they are saying about here!

thriftybabe

Really2 wrote: »

TBH I supply to education and I have not seen any cuts to budgets. Most have been frozen or being nominally increased (inflation).

The ones cutting are private schools as they have seen people cut back so revenues to some have them have dropped steeply.

But seen as they are asking for help now they have blown their budget. They get budgets April to April so it does sound like mis-management to me.

I will be so angry if this is the case! However, on the email there was a link to a petition to the local council not to make the cuts to the school budgets which seemed real enough. Will talk to other parents at the school and see what comes of that.

michael1983l

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

The schools budget has not had any cuts. In fact, it has had significant increases over recent years.

If local administrators cannot manage their funds between schools, they should be sacked and replaced with ones that can, rather than expecting parents to contribute twice for something they have already paid for through taxation.

That is simply not true, I know a teacher who has said that their school had 80k of funds that they were promised removed from the budget half way through the year. Bad thing is that they had already spent it, thats two teachers off then.

lostinrates

while cuts in education are abysmal and absolutely wholeheartedly to be among the very last economies we should make...is it so very bad to ask parents who can to contribute extra?


FWIW, I wish the local schools or education authorities would have a box put in the supermarkets or at school gates for those vouchers they always ask if you want. I always, always ask them to keep them for the next person who is collecting them, but you never know if they do, or if that person will deliver them or leave them clogging up the bottom of a handbag...

I have absolutely no connection to any of the local schools but would be happy enough to do something to help if there were official collections.

Kohoutek

thriftybabe wrote: »

The local council is saying there is a 2% cut in all schools in the area. They need to reduce their own budgets by £3 million. Our school too has embraced the idea of parentmail which is great and yes we do get the fundraising spam stuff too!

It's a shame the councils can't cut their gold plated pensions or their insist to publish everything in 14 languages rather than cut money from educating the future of this country.

I wish New Labour hadn't abolished the grant maintained system, I presume it was because it didn't fit in with their Nanny state ideology. It worked really well my school and then it was abruptly ended. The idea that the council are better qualified to set school budgets than the schools is an insult to headteachers, it just feeds the gravy train of council bureaucracy.