Do you think there is a lot of waste in the system?

Really2

Davesnave wrote: »

I don't think it is sensible to lump all public or private sector jobs together.

Working in education, I was certainly not wasting anything; in fact I spent a lot of time each year raising extra money to fill the gaps! However, what I was doing bore no relation to, say, administrators' actions in the nearby hospital.

I agree with that "public sector" does cover a vast area of jobs all varying greatly in type and budgets.

Davesnave

Another interesting thought....In some years my classes numbered only 26 children, while in others there were maybe 36, or even 40.

Was I being extra efficient in the large class years? If so, I wonder at what point parents would consider a teachers' time is spread too thinly and demand less efficiency?

Really2

Davesnave wrote: »

Another interesting thought....In some years my classes numbered only 26 children, while in others there were maybe 36, or even 40.

Was I being extra efficient in the large class years? If so, I wonder at what point parents would consider a teachers' time is spread too thinly and demand less efficiency?

Do they not get a pupil number related budget now in secondary schools?

Davesnave

Really2 wrote: »

Do they not get a pupil number related budget now in secondary schools?

It was always a pupil-related budget at all levels, but secondaries get far more per pupil, of course. The largest expenditure, however, is salaries. I wonder if, in the tough times ahead, we might go back to the 'good old days' of 40 in a class.

(Knowing what some of those 40 might be like these days, they're welcome!:eek:)

ninky_2

ses6jwg wrote: »

public sector

jobs for the boys

maxing out of budgets at year end

public sector jobs tend to be advertised unlike private sector jobs.

Really2

Davesnave wrote: »

It was always a pupil-related budget at all levels, but secondaries get far more per pupil, of course. The largest expenditure, however, is salaries. I wonder if, in the tough times ahead, we might go back to the 'good old days' of 40 in a class.

(Knowing what some of those 40 might be like these days, they're welcome!:eek:)

From what I hear on budgets not yet.;)
But I dare say assistants could have squeaky bums over the next few years.

vivatifosi

As I've mentioned before I work part time in a library. Prior to this I had little to no experience of public sector work, though I had temped in the local council for a few weeks.

Libraries for the most part are already run on a shoestring. Although its true we do have a budget for books, we are also reliant on public donations to keep up our stock levels. It helps that we have massive amounts of public goodwill in our corner. Most people who work in libraries (library assistants) earn significantly lower than the national wage. Experienced librarians just about make national average wage. We re-use just about everything to the point of it falling to bits - from padded envelopes to rubber bands. Where I am we don't even have paper pads, we make them out of paper that has already been used, held together with a bulldog clip. Joining the library service is like joining the Wombles. I can't see anything else that can be cut without closing branches or reducing hours.

Having said that, I did see some waste working in local government while temping, as well as some jobs that made me wonder why they were needed. What frustrated me most is that there were no recycling facilities for staff - so all those cans and drink bottles we are made to recycle at home go straight into the commercial waste as does cardboard, etc. Very odd. Local government never fines itself!

ninky_2

many years ago i worked as a library assistant in public libraries on a holiday job / casual basis. i agree they are quite underesourced.

the only wasteful thing that springs to mind from that time was the approach to the 'ethnic' books collection. the area was seeing quite a few immigrants from the indian subcontinent and they decided to invest in books in their languages (only no one was really sure which languages they were!). they cost a fortune and hardly anyone borrowed them - i'm not sure they really knew which books to invest in. i hate to use the phrase pc gone mad. but it was a bit misguided. this was quite a few years ago though.

Pennywise

But being busy and not having resources doesn't mean that there isn't waste does it? That's a very superficial view. It's not just the visible waste, what about the invisible?

It's all well and good saying that the staff are busy, but busy doing what? Is it something that actually "needs" to be done, or is it partly job-creation for another person/department?

Same with equipment, consumables, etc - it's about how well the limited funds are spent.

A person could well be "busy" working all their contracted hours, and could well be recycling their paper to make home-made writing pads, but does that person's job really need to be done at all? Could someone else do it? Is what they do really needed - could it be done another way more quickly? Do they really need a £2k computer on their desk? Does the desk really need to cost several hundred pounds when they could have bought one just as good for £100, etc etc etc - that's what I understand by "waste"

Jenny_

How about this- I work in a hospital ward- [EMAIL="a@e"]a@e[/EMAIL] have pressure on them to get patients a bed within 4 hours- to facilitte this we have bed mangers- they help by phoning the nurses regularly, so that they have to stop washing/clening the empty bed to ask "is the bed ready yet"-no, but it would have been if you hadnt phoned 5 times to ask me.

Or when we had a team of managers insist that a ward nurse needed to come to a meeting about a particular patient, which ran half an hour late, was mostly consisting of personal chit chat and at the end of it the only thing theyd asked of me was the patients weight that am. Which they could have phoned for and wasnt crucial to any descision making.