Money, money, money
This week’s conversation has seen headteachers all over the country lamenting their schools’ financial situation and some have taken to sharing their concerns online.
It seems likely that we will be heading into even choppier financial waters and many schools will be unable to set a balanced budget for next year. Any small reserves are being swallowed up in unfunded pay rises and soaring energy bills, and with the ballots for teacher strikes going out across the country, including for school leaders, it seems as if the teaching community are gearing up for a fight.
Meanwhile, the School Cuts website has relaunched. A powerful force in the electoral campaign of 2017 when it highlighted the local toll of 88 per cent of schools facing cuts, its home page now says 90 per cent will see their budgets fall.
But no election seems imminent, so rather than letters to parents about funding, it will be support staff redundancies and deep restructuring that instead will be discussed at many governors’ meetings. Schools will start to try to budget for next year, knowing that the children who will suffer the most will be whose with special educational needs who have extra staff to support them in the classroom.
Oak – Money better spent?
With money so tight, many are still asking whether the money for Oak National Academy could be better spent going directly into disadvantaged schools.
But the conversation still seems focused on whether the organisation is truly independent. Jon Coles, United Learning’s chief executive, has made his doubts clear in these pages and continues to do so online. Most convincing, perhaps, is the idea he put out this week that a new government could use Oak as a vehicle to put out its own supportive materials for a curriculum with less knowledge-rich rigour.
The bigger issue for me is that underpinning all of this is no longer the supportive ethos that saw Oak created during the pandemic, but a narrative of “curriculum mediocrity” in many schools, a mediocrity that needs fixing from Whitehall. I wonder what well-funded schools might be able to do with a little more independence and a little less ministerial interference.
‘Tis the season
Money isn’t just tight for schools. Across the country, the numbers of families falling into crisis is increasing – upping demand on schools to provide support. As we head into Christmas, the impact of increased poverty is likely to cause even more problems, and this blog from Hampshire head of inclusion Marie Greehalgh is a timely reminder of what schools can do to support young people and their families – and to prevent making matters worse!
Signposting that mental health problems have always manifested more strongly around and in the lead-up to Christmas, Greenhalgh sets out some tips that include explicitly teaching how to manage anxiety around the holidays and keeping the seasonal stress at the forefront of our minds when dealing with behaviour incidents.
Reflecting realities
And finally, returning to educational publishing, the annual CLPE Reflecting Realities report has been released this week. The headline data seems to indicate a rapid rise in the number of children’s books that feature a minority ethnic character from 4 per cent in 2017 to 20 per cent in 2021, but the reality is that only 9 per cent of the books published this year feature a main character from a racially minoritised background.
And while the reviews are mainly positive and really celebrate CLPE for the work it does and has done to bring important work like this to the forefront of children’s publishing, there are still some significant groups where the growth has not yet been significant enough to bring about change.
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