The lack of funding for state schools has caused a lot of strain in institutions. It was recently reported in a study by Tes that some teachers are setting up termly direct debits to pay for essential classroom supplies, and some are paying upwards of £1,000 cash in a year towards the running of their schools. A shocking fact in itself, which is only made worse by the stagnant salary teachers have experienced for the last seven years.
The Tes survey, run with the help of the NEU teaching union, included the feedback from more than 1,800 teachers. The report indicated that a staggering 94% of teachers are paying for school essentials like books and stationery. Delving deeper into the facts, the numbers broke down as the following: 73% of participants said they purchase stationery, 58% pay for books and 43% for art materials, all on a regular basis. Meanwhile, two-thirds of the teachers stated they were forced to pay for essentials or contribute money because of a lack of available funds from the government.
The pressure on teachers to achieve results is evident, and many feel that they need to invest their own money to do so, as expressed in the following comment by one teacher: “I need resources to create the ‘wow’ factor for my lessons… and there is so much pressure on us not to spend the school budget.”
Commenting on the result of the survey, Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders stated: “This is a terrible indictment of where we are, in terms of school funding… teachers are paying for this out of their own pockets- and we all know about teachers’ pay. It shouldn’t be like that.”
The survey also indicates that teachers are spending more of their own money on resources and equipment than they have in previous years, with the habit of paying for essentials being firmly established as a ‘must’ of the job. NEU assistant general secretary, Andrew Morris, stated: “Even teachers in their first year of teaching are becoming used to the idea that they have to pay for necessary resources. It’s being regarded as a regular feature of the job.”
Placing responsibility on the government, Morris continued: “It’ll give the government cover from having to increase funding to the extent that it should do. There’s a big step-change between ‘We haven’t got the cash to let you buy things’ and ‘We haven’t got cash- give us some of your money’.”
The sad reality is that parents are also having to fork out to aid their children’s education, with two-thirds of respondents indicating that schools are charging parents to attend events such as sports events and school concerts. In some instances, as reported by the PTA UK survey, some parents are even having to pay for schools to be stocked with basic items like toilet paper.
Despite the education secretary Justine Greening announcing the new national funding formula to increase budgets by at least 1%, the stark reality is that this could result in many state-funded schools losing out on the money they rely on as budgets are equalised. Additionally, unions have outlined that this rise is simply not adequate enough to deal with the rising costs of funding state education and make up for the severe cuts the education system has experienced over the last couple of years.
Understandably, there is now a lot of pressure directed at governing bodies to resolve, or at the very least, alleviate the issues caused by insufficient funding for the running of state schools. As more and more problems arise, it will be down to the government to offer viable solutions to the crisis. The experts here at Expense Reduction Analysts believe that a comprehensive review of where and how the school budgets are invested in state schools will help to relieve some of the pressure off the heavily-burdened teachers. We have years of experience helping organisations save money, and our office supplies services could look to identify ways schools can save money so that teachers are not having to pay for supplies out of their own pocket!
Article by: Nick Clement