What is Ed Balls thinking?
Increased pressure is being placed upon those in senior roles within schools after Ed Balls made his recent announcement about cutbacks. While head teachers are very skilled professionals, it seems that they are the people likely to lose their jobs if the cuts go ahead.
The success of a good school is down to the skills of head teachers and their staff. Clearly, without good leaders our schools will suffer. But by “thinning out” good leaders - by asking them to manage larger schools or groups of schools - we would be stretching existing resources to their limits. Simply threatening teachers with cuts will have the effect of de-stabilizing many schools.
Serious questions need to be asked about spending within the government, rather than focusing on the people on the front line, who, day in day out, deliver the service to the ultimate end users: our children.
There are many other areas the government could look at before it cuts teachers jobs. One is the investment it’s putting in to the new Schools Recruitment Service.
The DCSF has awarded a contract estimated to be worth £12 million to build and operate the Schools Recruitment Service – ignoring the fact that there are already very viable and capable providers in this space, like Eteach, who can and who already do deliver this service without spending £12 million.
Eteach is committed to reducing the cost of recruitment – and is the only company that can guarantee that it will cut the cost of a school’s recruitment.
“Education - Education – Education” was the pledge from New Labour when they were first elected; now it’s “Education cuts – Education cuts – Education cuts.” What a shocking turnaround!
One thing we know for sure when it comes to cutting costs is that cutting teachers’ and school leaders’ jobs is not the answer.
I am very keen to understand your position on these cutbacks. If you were required to make the decision on where cutbacks should be made, where you would start?
23 Sept 2009
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I would start by scraping the building schools for the future programme by private investors(private education via the back door)and invest in up to date environmentally friendly buildings (reducing running cost) in areas which receive regeneration monies etc and kept schools in the control of the LEA. Get rid of the quango CWDC an unnecessary cost.
ReplyDeleteBring politicians (local councillors, MPs and ministers) expenses in line with council staff(mileage claims only and no 2nd home allowance. They could have £45 sleep out allowance per night like some long distance drives receive) and reduce the numbers of the higher paid politics increasing the size of the areas they represent.
Reduce the number of government inspections that are carried out or at least the number of personnel that are required to conduct them out.
Scrap SATs which would reduce the cost of marking them and producing the test papers.
Raise income tax for those earning over £50k per year.
Have school facilities (i.e. Halls, Gyms, sports fields, IT suites) open at weekends and evening for community use at a reasonable charge as income generation.
Review the CRB process so that it does not need to be carried from scratch each time you apply for one at a cost about £45. There could be a data base that is accessible by heads of personnel/head teachers that would enable a check for any thing new since the last time a CRB was carried out for an individual.
If there was a reduction in spending on some of the above then there would be no need to get rid of good qualified teaching staff which are essential to having a well educated work force for the future