Scarborough headteacher: 'Soul destroying' to make changes due to underfunding
Many could look at staff redundancies as a result as well as cutting extra provision for children with special educational needs
A Scarborough headteacher says it is "soul destroying" to make changes at her school due to underfunding.
It comes as the largest ever survey of headteachers in England found that half of schools said they will have to make staff redundancies, with two thirds saying they will have to cut down on teaching assistants.
It is thought it will be ‘catastrophic’ for children if school budgets are not increased as extra provision for those with special educational needs could be cut.
Vicki Logan is the headteacher at Overdale Community Primary School in Eastfield. She said: "We've worked very hard post-pandemic to put in recovery plans and those are absolutely vital for children to close gaps in learning which obviously is costly, and now the rug's being pulled from underneath us and that's very distressing to think we've put all these things in action, we've seen some progress, and we can't continue them.
"I'm also going to have to look at all the extra curricular activities that support our children's mental health; things like additional music provision, speech and language provision, educational visits off-site and paying for children to go inside museums and transport to those places. They'll all have to be reviewed.
"Every year our school for 10 years has paid for every child to go and see the pantomine. This year, we're going to be asking parents for that at a time when parents are paying out extra money for food, bills and they just don't have that money. I can understand in these present times that's going to be a struggle, especially if you have two, three or four more children.
"It's soul destroying. It's absolutely distressing to think that we've worked so hard and now we're being treated in this way, we're not being funded appropriately through school to pay the pay award for our teachers and our teaching support. Everyone who so richly deserves to have that pay award is being treated in an appalling way.
"Children with additional needs have gotten used to having one-to-one time, small group time, having places they can go to at break and lunch times and be guaranteed an ear that'll listen to them, empathise with them and support them. They're going to feel that difference because they're going to have to work through that themselves.
"If the Government's going to give that pay award, which they absolutely should, then they must support schools to fund it. We don't want our teachers leaving this profession, we want them coming into it and the way to do that is to pay them properly, train them well and to respect the ones who've been here for a long time with the correct pay award."