Protests being organised around Sussex by the East Sussex Schools’ Campaign for Fair and Sufficient Funding (@FlatCashEd) against national cuts in the funding for schools, as well as the amount per pupil in Sussex as compared to other areas, coincided on Tuesday, March 14, with a meeting for parents at the Studio School about specific cuts affecting their children. Heidi Foster reports:
When I saw parents picketing with placards at the bus stops near Jempson’s, I stopped to ask what was happening. They told me that cuts will mean 14-16-year-olds at Rye College will not be able to transfer to the Studio School as it is closing to new students. (See Double blow for schools)
The demonstration was not just about the Studio School but part of a county-wide protest that schools in this part of the country are being hit by more severe funding cuts than other areas and, as the front page article makes clear, the Rye Academy group of schools (and therefore their students) are paying the price of this policy.
Many of those demonstrating had children either currently at the Studio School or who were hoping to go there. One, Amanda Jobson, whose son who is nearly 15 and who was looking forward to joining the Studio School with some of his peers, felt it would have given them the possibility to further their creative interests in music, art, media and fashion, in addition to the academic curriculum
I was told by Mrs Jobson that the parents were up in arms and that there was a meeting to discuss this with the school that evening. She said one of the questions will be: “What are these students, who want to move on to the Studio School at 14, to do for the next two years? Must they remain, unwillingly, in the academic stream?”
They are asking local MP and Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, to put her political weight behind this and to help overturn the decision. There are parents, including herself, Mrs Jobson said, who are willing to try to raise funds if that would help keep these pre-GCSE years open to the students. Another demonstrator, Mary Ruphy, felt that a very positive feature at the Studio School was the ability to get the students into relevant training and apprenticeships which was so important for their future careers.
Anyone interested in further information can go to the Fair Funding website or facebook FlatCashEd
Photos: Heidi Foster
Since there is no link to my previous comment about school funding, I repeat it here:
The untidy inception of ‘Academies’ first as ‘partial solutions’ from a Labour Government, then as ‘privatisation vehicles’ from the Conservatives, have served students very poorly. We now witness the damage, aggravated by 6 years of unprecedented cuts from central government.
In some ill-defined way (softly-softly lose the monkey) the management of education has dissolved. The Local Authorities (in our case the East Sussex County Council) have involuntarily relinquished control of supervision, advice, audit and administration. Schools themselves (our Academy Trust) now have to finance that themselves out of their education budget, buying that old and considerable government expertise from outside, mostly private, often inexperienced companies or organisations – a wholly inappropriate use of resources. The profits of those private companies leak money from our children’s education, and a great deal of it ends up in the USA.
England has long been unique in its psychosocial psychosis about education – the anxieties of parents (unhappily transmitted to children) about selection of school and perceptions of achievement that are not mirrored in most other countries, where you simply attend your local school and parents involve themselves in helping to improve that school and holding it to its standards. Here parents are always terrified the grass is greener somewhere else.
All stemming of course from England’s sad fixation with private (so called Public) schools. It was a Tory Minister of Education (Sir Edward Boyle) who declared in the 1960s that there could never be an accepted solution to state education in England until Public Schools were abolished. He was, not unnaturally, a supporter of Comprehensive Education, which he believed the only vehicle to offer equal opportunity, insofar as that was possible.
Unfortunately the English parent looked and continues to look for easier solutions – instant answers and achievement, instant betterment. And ‘instant’ in education does not exist.
So we ended up with a series of government initiatives trying to pretend state education was worthy of comparison with the private sector, when it should never have ever considered itself in competition.
And it should of course never have allowed the financial charity-benefits (tax) that are offered to private schools.
Regularly state education has been under-funded – at the moment, since 2010, to the tune of many hundreds of pounds per pupil each year. The damage is to some extent mitigated by the dedication of staff who regularly work beyond their remit (as they do in our NHS and Social Services).
And just to add to the absurdity in education, this hapless government now intends to expand Grammar Schools – to accentuate with the ridiculous 11+ the strain on already hysterical parents and shortly to be hysterical children.
(For what it’s worth as an example, I failed the 11+; but eventually reached the privilege of a place at Oxford – it is criminal to label children failures before they even reach adolescence).
Whatever the problems that face the Rye Academy Trust (and we all wish them well – the dissolution of English education was not their idea), the rest of us should be campaigning for an increase in general taxation to save not only the infrastructure of our education, but our health service and social care. In those respects this country (under-taxed in comparison with most other First World economies) really is teetering on the edge of disaster.
Yet still no one seems to notice sufficiently. If this extent of social decay was happening in Canada, New Zealand or Germany, there would be riots in the street.
I can only agree with above comments and May’s intention to spend millions on Grammar schools, more social division, when we need money to make all schools the best we can for the children from every background and support for students with psychological difficulties.
I have mentioned in an article before re NHS/social care that I talk to many people who would be happy to pay extra tax if it was ring-fenced for education / NHS or Mental Health.
Having said that I would like be clear that any tax/VAT increases or cuts should be relative to the have’s and the have’s not. At the moment I see cuts being made (to balance the debt!!!) in health, disability and as May/Cameron say to “the hard working people”, though the promise was to look after them.
The Government needs to be fair and look at both ends of the social strata to collect necessary funds.