schools rocked by budget cuts
WORKERS, NOVEMBER 2003 ISSUE
A UNIVERSITY OF Liverpool report published last month confirms that this year's budget deficit in schools, dismissed by the government as insignificant, is in fact worse than thought. The report is a direct challenge to Blair and his education department, which claims that the number of "loser" schools is a minority. It concludes that between 14,000 and 15,000 of the country's state schools had a budget cut. As a consequence, some 8,800 teaching jobs and over 12,000 support staff are estimated to be lost.
True, some expanding schools are taking on additional staff, but the net reduction in teachers' jobs is around 4,500. Blair's assertion that 10,000 extra teachers would be employed in Labour's second term is looking sick.
Additionally, the report points to the fact that, despite extra funding in the next two years, schools would struggle to avoid further redundancies. And almost half of secondary schools said more classes would be taken by teachers not trained in the relevant subject.
The authors of the report, Professor Alan Smithies and Dr Pamela Robinson, said, "The consequences for the majority of schools have been disastrous." Half of secondary schools and one in five primaries report increased class sizes.
Not yet a crisis, but the warning signs are there. This government is beginning to renege on its commitment to education in this country. They want the money for other purposes. At the same time as they export our money and resources to Iraq, (ironically bringing their education system to its knees in the process), they compromise the quality we expect of our own schools with a strategy of underfunding.
The unions in education are much exercised at the moment, largely at national level, by what divides them. A greater appreciation of the real problems teachers face, and their common enemy, could yet prove the catalyst for unity, a prerequisite for progress.