According to its latest Ofsted Report, South Malling Church of England Primary School is a good school in all aspects and, even more importantly, it has always had the loyal support of parents who value the experienced and dedicated staff.
It is therefore tragic that the school management is in dispute with staff members of the National Education Union and parents. There have already been five days of strikes with staff on the picket lines being supported by parents and members of the local community.
The reason for all this uproar is that the school is proposing to reduce the numbers of support staff in a cost-cutting exercise.
The school employs a teaching assistant for every classroom. This has made it unique in East Sussex but this comes at a cost, which has already been seen in the decision to halt music provision and to abandon forest school.
Unprecedented uproar
Of course, excellent teachers are expensive but the fact that the school still has a full complement of teaching assistants is a tribute to the head, Charlotte Roberts, and her management team who have believed it necessary for the success of the school and the wellbeing of its pupils. But they feel now they have no other option but to make cuts if they are to balance the budget. Whilst everyone realises that this is the result of inadequate funding for schools over many years, it was felt that this had to be resisted even if it meant strike action.
The effects are expected to be severe with the number of teaching assistants halved from six full-time staff to 3.8 full time equivalents. Years 2 to 6 would only have additional help in the mornings, although Reception and Year 1 would retain their full-time assistants. Furthermore, an individual needs post will be axed and the Pastoral Lead’s hours will be cut.
With numbers in most classes above 30, all this clearly puts extra pressure on teachers and loads extra work on everyone. The remaining Teaching Assistants would be expected to take classes on their own if the teacher was planning or marking. So the result is a lot more work for some people while others, usually the most lowly paid, will be made redundant or have to find another job to make up the lost hours.
Every child at the school will suffer
It is obvious that this is going to have serious implications for the children’s learning, especially those with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND). Already there have been instances where children are being sent home early or told to arrive later in the day as there aren’t the staff to look after them.
Despite a legal duty to children who have an Education, Health and Care Plan, some have lost their helpers and one parent reported that her child was left soiled for hours in class. There are many children whose needs are over and above the normal attention needed in lessons and there are so many heartbreaking stories told by parents. How can there, for example, be little or no help for a class which is being regularly disrupted by an aggressive child? Parents should not be worrying about their children’s safety in school.
Public meetings are being planned and James McCleary, the local Lib Dem MP, has been told about the situation. He has appealed to Bridget Phillipson to intervene in this crisis, pointing out that every child at the school will suffer from the cuts to support staff but that it will be the children with special needs who will feel the impact worst.
South Malling school, along with many others in the county and nationally, are being required to deliver a wide and varied curriculum, without adequate funding. According to schoolcuts.org.uk ‘74% of schools in England have less funding in real terms than in 2010’ and it appears that East Sussex County Council is one of many which is strapped for cash and seeking to balance budgets through making cuts. Pepe Di’Iasio, General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “Behind these stark statistics are thousands of schools and colleges which have had to increase class sizes and make cuts to the curriculum, pastoral support, and extracurricular provision. These are the real-world consequences of the chronic underfunding of the education system, and the reality is that we’re now facing the prospect of further cuts.”
The real-world consequences of chronic underfunding
The Government’s spending review in June gives schools a £2 billion increase in funding by 2029 but the suggested pay rise for teachers this year is only 2.8%, and it has to be covered by schools’ budgets. About 85% of a school’s income goes on staff salaries, leaving little for fixing crumbling buildings or supporting the growing number of SEND pupils for which additional finance is often slow in coming.
The parents and teachers campaigning at South Malling Primary School, like so many others up and down the country, believe that our children are being failed before they have even had a fair chance and that well-funded primary schools, offering a wide curriculum and opportunities for extracurricular activities, are that chance and should be every child’s right.
Individual head teachers are being forced into accessing top up funding from sympathetic private donors or from Parent Teacher Associations which, instead of paying for extras, are now using money raised from fetes and quiz nights for necessities such as books and stationery.
Education should be a spending priority for all governments but especially so now, when years of underfunding combined with the effects of school closures during the pandemic, have been disastrous for so many of our children.
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