School support staff have borne the brunt of funding cuts

Over a thousand parents, teachers, school support staff and head teachers attended the school cuts lobby of Parliament on Tuesday, to bring the message to MPs that 88% of our schools are seriously underfunded. The fantasy that emanates from the government – that there are huge efficiency savings still to be made, and that it is possible to make further cuts without having an impact on children’s education – is increasingly derisible. While, understandably, teachers have been in the spotlight, it is school support staff that have borne the brunt of funding cuts in recent years. Since 2013, teaching assistant numbers in secondary schools have dropped by 8% – and by 4% in 2016 alone. There has been a 10% reduction in the number of school technicians since 2012 and last year saw a further 1.6% decrease in other support staff – which would have been higher if huge numbers hadn’t already been outsourced. In Scotland it is even worse, with 20% – yes one fifth – of support staff having gone since 2010. More than 14,000 UNISON members responded to questions on cuts and redundancies in our 2016 survey, revealing a litany of woes. Almost two thirds of schools had either made redundancies or left posts vacant and a third of schools had cut their SEN budgets, with a similar amount cutting their maintenance budget. Office staff are under particular threat as the Department for Education specifically asks schools to consider merging their roles. Government seem to think that...
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