The situation in our nation’s schools right now is just unacceptable (Picture: Getty Images)
One day, I came into class with my children to discover the floor had caved in.
There were gaping holes up to a metre down all over the classroom.
We later learned that the water pipes in our 100-year-old school building had corroded and cracked. The resulting flood of water caused the floor to collapse.
So the class had to be evacuated into another room, in a school already squeezed for space.
We’d got used to peeling plaster, and rain leaking into the corridors and halls filled with buckets. But there was no spare money to fix running repairs.
In the winter, heating bills became a challenge. The classrooms have draughty doors and windows and can be freezing cold.
But after the floor caving in, it was then that I realised I had to speak out.
With less and less sufficient Government funding, the situation in our nation’s schools right now is just unacceptable – and in some cases unsafe.
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For a while, the extra pupil premium money our school received due to the high levels of poverty in our Manchester community helped. But as the funding squeeze has got worse, the cracks are literally too big to cover.
Last year, you may remember many schools were in the news with crumbling concrete. Dangerous school buildings at risk of collapse caused some to close for repairs.
But this was just the most visible symptom of a wider problem. My school didn’t have concrete issues, but our school building is in a terrible state of disrepair. While repair bills are rising due to the age of buildings, funding levels are falling.
On top of that, the lack of money for support staff is less visible than the building. But it has an even worse impact.
I’ve been here 20 years. So I remember the times when we could decorate the classrooms each year.
And when we had enough teaching assistants to ensure that even a large class of over 30 children was well supported by a teacher and TA. We could offer attention for small group work, help for those with additional needs and a nice environment.
Teaching assistants raise the quality of the experience for the whole class. If you’re breaking into small groups to tailor advice and ensure pupils get the most out of the lesson, you need someone else to be supporting the rest of the class.
This isn’t just behaviour management, their role is integral to children’s learning and success at school.
I know one colleague was even cooking batch meals for a family for a couple of months
On a practical basis, educators need a break too if we are going to do our best work. Instead, we are regularly teaching three hours nonstop, heading straight from lessons onto breaktime monitoring duty and then …read more
Source:: Metro
