During the 1920s, the USA saw an economic boom. American families’ lives were transformed by new technologies, new media, new transport and even new dance crazes. This social explosion led to the emancipation of the domestic housewife in big cities, a rise in social mobility, and a widespread feel good factor across much of the USA.
In many ways schools over the last 15 years have seen similar growth. New schools have popped up around the country with a view to becoming centres for community learning, acting almost as educational beacons to disadvantaged areas.
Resources and funding appeared to rise in order to facilitate a world-class learning environment that could compete with nations apparently outperforming our own.
New technologies swept old backboards off their walls to encourage an altogether more interactive and contemporary style of learning which was heralded by researchers and educational watchdogs.
However, both of these prosperous eras were brought crashing down. The first by the 1929 Wall Street Crash and the second by the savage austerity and huge real-terms cuts to schools funding, topped off by the 2017 National Funding Formula.
It is a stark comparison, but the funding picture for schools really is that bleak. Schools are likely to be faced with the need to cut back staffing, ask more of existing staff and reduce the curriculum offer available. Indeed some schools have already spoken about the possibility of four-day weeks, finishing early on a Wednesday and an increase in class sizes which will undoubtedly lead to a fall in outcomes.
This is the reality, this is not a “whinge”. When the vulnerable student is left without the level of support required for them to receive an adequate education, when the more able child is not given the wider opportunities by the teacher who is now stretched to breaking point, or when the curriculum narrows to such an extent that our creative and practical students can no longer feel a sense of worth, then we will see the true impact of this new wave of real-term cuts.
The schools in the borough where I work will all be worse off. Indeed, SecEd reported last week on research showing that every school in the country will be worse off, with secondary schools facing an average loss of £291,000 by 2019 (Secondary schools face £291,000 real-terms cut: http://bit.ly/2nA6WaN).
The next few years will see some schools become poorer to the tune of half a million pounds (some face losing up to 11 per cent of their budgets, the same research warned).
That means fewer teachers, fewer school repairs, less support for the poorer students, less money for CPD, and less money for non-teaching – just for starters.
It also means greater demands on headteachers to balance the books, heavier workloads for teachers covering the cracks left by a reduced workforce and, among many other problems, a crisis for students who crave the additional adult support which they lack at home.
Parents with students who have behavioural needs, mental health concerns and learning difficulties will be shocked by the impact that such cuts will undoubtedly have upon their children. What’s more, the plethora of research into the real-terms funding cuts in schools has consistently shown a disproportionate negative impact on schools serving the poorest communities.
These cuts risk creating a large youth population that will be disillusioned with the lack of support they receive during their education, perhaps furious at the lack of resources and opportunity afforded to them and left feeling abandoned by a government which has claimed to be for the working people.
With the narrowing of the curriculum that such austerity inevitably forces, we risk telling the future of this country that we do not value their education; that we only value the education of those who might become professionally valuable to a new economic world.
The only way to raise real awareness of this issue is to continue to pressure politicians who are arguing this case. The government’s u-turn on enforced academisation is a recent example of teacher power and how it has the authority to change the thinking of our educational leadership.
The push for new grammar schools and further expansion of the free school movement will mean that many state schools could soon be overwhelmed by a tidal wave of competition alongside these resource cuts.
In the 1920s, the American people and their government had only one battle, to re-ignite their economy. They were united. In our case, the battle, the sides and the future all seem a lot less clear.
- This comment has been written by a school leader working in the North West of England.