Barnet Trades Council

• The Institute of Fiscal Studies reports every school will have cuts, as a result of the National Funding Formula currently being proposed.
• The Department of Education reports a £3 billion overspend which is carried over to the new budgets.
• For the last 2 years the National Audit Office reported to Parliament that they cannot approve the accounts of the Department for Education.
• Academy schools are facing the same CUTS from successive years and CUTS from the proposed National Funding Formula still to come.

Barnet Academy schools are lobbying government. The co-ordinator told the TES (February 2017) “As professional managers we are already making savings, up to and including staffing cuts. We are not replacing staff who leave, cutting teaching and support provision, reducing spending on text books, and we will inevitably have to consider passing some of our costs onto parents.”

A Kent grammar, also in the national media is turning to parents to “fund the gap”. Parental charges for essential resources such as Teachers and text books is proposed as school fees for parents to pay.

Teacher redundancies equal larger class sizes. Teaching assistant redundancies undermine quality education. Cuts to teaching and Teaching Assistant jobs at a time when there is a crisis in teacher recruitment and retention is foolhardy to say the least.

Government can find money if it wants to fund the future of our children ’s education and the future of the teaching profession.

Government has allowed huge, unacceptable waste of the education budget for example 17 free schools have been funded lavishly and closed in the last 4 years.

There should be public information listing the land the DfE and Education Funding Agency has purchased for free schools out of our education budget  but there is not.

It is not at all clear who is holding the title deeds to all this land purchased and the land that left public ownership through academisation.

The reasons for the waste of money including the legal costs of academisation are not in any way connected to improving education and are ideological.

Barnet has 90 local authority primary schools of which 36 are rated by Ofsted as Outstanding.
Barnet Schools must be funded for current staffing levels or excellence cannot continue.
School fees are not an option for the provision of State Education and a National Education System.

Dear friend

I am writing to ask if you would support our campaign to stop the cuts to school budgets.

Schools are set to lose £3 billion a year in real terms by 2020. These are the largest cuts to school funding since the 1970s.

MPs from all parties have been urging the Government to invest more in our schools; in some areas governors have taken the unprecedented move of threatening strike action while parents and teachers are organising meetings up and down the country to draw attention to the issue.

Our website www.schoolcuts.org.uk gives you an idea of severity of the problem. Just type in your postcode to see how schools in your area will be affected.

It would make a huge difference to our campaign if you would add your voice to our campaign, you can email your MP at http://www.schoolcuts.org.uk/# /email-your-mp

A parents campaign has been founded and has groups in a number of towns and cities. Please sign up with them too at www.fairfundingforallschools. org.

In solidarity,

Kevin Courtney

(General Secretary, National Union of Teachers)

See you on the streets.