Dominic Coughlin, Secretary for the Isle of Wight County Teachers’ Association shares this latest news. Ed
The NUT has called a national strike on Tuesday 5th July. The focus of the strike is against cuts in school funding.
Schools on the Isle of Wight are already feeling the effects of the Government freeze on education spending. This has resulted in cuts in Support Staff and other provision. On the Island, ten schools have already been forced to declare redundancies this year.
Increasing bills for schools
Worse than that, the Government is adding 5% to the teachers’ pay bill for Schools by increasing National Insurance and Pension contributions.
In effect this means that for every twenty teachers employed the school has to give the equivalent of another teacher’s salary to the Treasury – this unfunded increase is obviously not sustainable.
Further cuts expected
Earlier this month the Government started a consultation on a National Funding Formula (NFF) for schools. The Isle of Wight will not in fact benefit from the Government’s proposed NFF for schools, since the Government’s overall funding freeze will sweep away all of the funding gains promised by the NFF.
The Isle of Wight is likely to see a further cut in funding of about 4.8%1.
No funds to buy books or other resources
A recent survey2 of NUT members found that 95% of teachers have used their own money to buy resources for children. Of these 57% said that they did this often due to lack of school funds.
Lack of funding has forced some Schools on the Island to stop all photocopying, while at least one has run out of exercise books and can cannot afford to purchase any more.
We call on all children, parents and school staff to support the action and send a clear message to Government.
1. The NUT has taken estimates published by the f40 group of local authorities on the impact of a revised funding formula on funding allocations for schools in each local authority area and adjusted those revised allocations for the impact of forecast inflation over the period to the end of this Parliament using forecasts for average CPI inflation over that period as published in HM Treasury’s Forecasts for the UK Economy.
2. Survey conducted between the 25th and 28th June 2016.
Image: Ryan Stanton under CC BY 2.0
