Gary Lineker

Quoted from GollyGTFC

Exactly. The COVID affected intake into school from nursery largely went in to reception year behind where they should have been both in education terms and social skills. It will take years for those children to catch up and some never will.

There’s a real risk that this will become the norm. Fixing preschool provision will mean less intervention when the children get to primary school. It’s always the best solution to fix the cause of problems rather than constantly having to deal with the consequences.

Quoted from aldi_01

This transcends the entire education sector. Schools can only set a deficit budget once, twice and the ESFA come looking and then you’re under all sorts of scrutiny, regardless of how good your school is.

The strikes recently haven’t been about teachers pay necessarily but about the budgeting and economic and staffing crisis hitting education provisions. Still, because folk refuse to actually do their research, as this thread has shown, people just assume it’s about greedy teachers. I’ve friends who are headteachers and senior leaders like myself who’ve received emails from parents simply having a go.

One recently was quite rude so their responses back went along the lines of ‘the TA in your son’s class is valuable and works hard to ensure your son achieved his outcomes, sadly, it is likely they your son’s class TA along with some others will be made redundant in order for the school to break even…this is why teachers are going on strike’.

Then, you factor in the high needs funding deficit. Recently the government published the green paper response claiming to have invested nearly a billion pounds in to high needs blocks nationally…brilliant, there’s a projected 9bn deficit…LAs are going back to schools to review funding formulas and claw back money for the DSG. Schools have little choice if they’re wanting supporting and funding for the more vulnerable…

Then there’s a serious recruitment crisis, sufficiency issues and everything else to contend with…but none of this is the fault of a few Albanians or refugees…anyone that thinks it is is either stupid or just a bigot…

We’re at a point where almost every Education provision, particularly schools, are likely to have to see deficit budgets…what a flipping mental country we live in…managed to find 37bn overnight for a track and trace system, and hundreds of millions for PPE companies owned by tory mates…

Quoted from DB

You make a very point here about education and child welfare. The sad fact is that it could refer to any aspect of life today, nurses, doctors, railway personnel etc. Our basic road infrastructure was started by the Romans and the railways by the Victorians. We now have congested motorways with no new ones planned and a railway system not fit for purpose and no plans to improve either, with HS2 being shelved in some areas.

I don't want to go on about a north/south divide but the so-called levelling up came to nothing. Money for the Elizabeth underground and nothing to connect the electrification of Hull to Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool lines.

In every aspect of life, everybody has been let down except the billionaires and millionaires.