Kevin Prunty is executive head teacher at Cranford community college, a high-achieving school in Hounslow, west London. His pupils are ambitious and successful, but many come from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Like other schools serving deprived areas, Cranford find itself increasingly playing a sophisticated welfare role in its community.
It is also footing the bill for uniforms, PE kits, shoes, lunches and educational trips from a diminishing budget, to subsidise parents who cannot afford to meet the costs.
And with the devastating Toree Cutz, it claims it cannot afford to continue.
“Schools know already that there are sizeable further cuts to funding on the way – and whilst we are currently able to fund these additional needs – it will soon become more difficult and perhaps impossible to justify doing so,” says Prunty.
Good! You should never have started justifying this in the first place!
At Springwest Academy in nearby Feltham, which also serves a community with high levels of disadvantage, there are similar concerns. Pastoral mentors deal with calls day in and day out from families with worries about housing and finances; school uniforms and shoes are being paid for more frequently out of the school’s hardship fund and almost four out of ten pupils (38.3%) are referred for counselling or other mental-health support.
I've often scorned the pitiful attempts at budget cuts but it seems they are, finally, starting to have
some effect. If only on getting state institutions to start reverting to what they are paid to do.
And extra credit for complaining about the Tori Cutz while operating under a ludicrous job title like executive head teacher. Huh? Isn't that like 'senior king'?
ReplyDeleteIf they want to do something about the budget, they might want to try not declaring that every second English teacher is now a se'nior literature experience manager'.
Misguided people do misguided things and the world appears to have a plethora of them. In fact I would say using the Pareto principle it can be safely said to amount to at least 80% of us. Which must be something of a dilemma for creationists and evolutionists as god or nature is not doing a very good job at making us what we are. Another dilemma is that the billions on our planet even not all knowing one another and individually not many of any consequence manage collectively to design and build the means and systems to improve our lives for the better. Yet many in our societies are working relentlessly to do harm and negate all the progress we have made since we climbed down from the trees and always have but we still manage to build more than we destroy. A range of dichotomies that is enough to give philosophers aeons of sleepless nights.
ReplyDeleteSo next time the buggers say they can't afford to educate kids because they are short of equipment they can be told to get stuffed.
ReplyDeleteI'll bet these children go home (in their uniforms paid from the educational budget) to large flat-screen TVs and game consoles.
ReplyDeleteNotwithstanding the fact that if those children are so disadvantaged, they must be eligible for pupil premiums. That would pay for a lot of equipment...
ReplyDelete"....while operating under a ludicrous job title like executive head teacher. Huh? Isn't that like 'senior king'?"
ReplyDeleteFor all they despise 'big business', they love appropriating titles...
"So next time the buggers say they can't afford to educate kids because they are short of equipment they can be told to get stuffed."
That is actually my default response, to be fair...
"That would pay for a lot of equipment..."
Indeed! Funny how it's not mentioned by the 'journalist' writing the article, eh?