The branch followed up our first survey of school cuts in autumn 2017. We asked school staff and parents questions linked to the financial crisis which continues to disproportionately impact West Sussex children. Here are some highlights.
91% of parents told us they think their child’s school is in financial difficulty.
98% of parents said that the savings their school will have to make will have a negative impact.
One parent said:
“The underfunding of our schools is critically disabling state schools and pushing them into failure with no way out.”
The comparative data between the two surveys tells us that it is still the most vulnerable children who are affected most by cuts in schools. Things are getting incrementally worse, not better.
68% said that SEN provision had got worse compared to 65% last year.
25.3% now said SEN provision was ‘much worse’ due to these cuts, compared to 18.6% last year.
One parent said:
“My son has autism, already the school have had to cut his speech therapy and reduce his one to one support.”
There was also a marked increase in the number of support staff being made redundant.
Where the staff being dismissed was greater than five, this rose from 18.7% last year to 30.7% this year.
The data also tells us that parents are being asked to fill the gap where a squeeze is made on school resources.
91% said savings had been made on resources, and 74% for school events.
This means that many children are denied access to adequate resources or educational school trips.
One parent said:
“Last summer my children’s trip was cancelled due to too many parents not being able to contribute and the school was unable to subsidise it. This trip was a core part of the topic the children were learning.”
The data shows that falling standards, increased workloads, work related stress and other health problems are all directly attributable to these funding cuts, and are getting worse.
57% told us that educational standards had got worse, an increase from 47% last year.
79% of staff had an increased workload and 48% had experienced stress or some kind of health problem, up from 44% last year.
We’ll be alerting local media and working with the Save Our Schools campaign to reverse these damaging cuts. Thank you if you completed our survey.