Diary of a Sheffield headteacher: ‘Due to cuts to social care we now have to do a lot more to support our students’

In the UK, publicly funded social care is mainly paid for by the local councils, not the NHS, with spending across England decreasing from £22bn in 2010/11 to £21.3bn in 2017/18.

This formed part of wider cuts to spending in the aftermath of the 2008 recession – but these were not the only budgets to be slashed.

School funding has been on a decline since 2010, putting many schools in ‘crisis’ with budgets falling around eight per cent across the country.

Under the National Funding Formula – NFF – Sheffield did not receive a fair share of education funding in 2018/19 when compared to other core cities such as Manchester or Nottingham.

Following this The Star and Sheffield Telegraph launched a campaign calling on the government to redress the funding situation and provide fair funding for Sheffield schools.

As part of a week-long series which began yesterday, The Star is delving into school life at Watercliffe Meadow Primary School, in Shirecliffe, through the eyes of headteacher Ian Read.

Mr Read and his team are put under ever-increasing pressure due to a string of external factors such as cuts to social care budgets which, when coupled with years of devastating cuts to education funding, means the school is effectively ‘propping up other care services’ to support its students.

In the next installment of the diary, which details just one week in November, he reveals how those at the school have to go that extra mile to support families in desperate need.

Tuesday

Following on from yesterday’s staff sickness absence, today one of the four staff returned, which made the cover arrangements for the morning slightly easier than yesterday. I say morning because at lunchtime we had to send one of our reception teachers home who had been sick and at the start of the afternoon one of our Year 3 teachers had to leave because his daughter was also sent home sick from her school and he was the only available adult.

Staff have rallied round and we have managed to cover those absences for a second day without using supply but once again it is support for children that is affected, not to mention the impact on staff who have had to do additional duties at lunchtimes and after school in order to free people for the cover. I have to say this is an unusual week, we usually get a handful like it in a year and before the redundancies, we would’ve been able to cover this sort of situation with less impact on children’s education.

This morning started with our weekly safeguarding meeting. A team of my staff meet before school to discuss ongoing cases with some level of social care or multi-agency support and any new notes of concern flagged up by staff over the previous week. Typically, between 50-60 cases are monitored and discussed; this morning there were 57 of our 550 pupils discussed.

Over the past few years we have seen a huge cut to social care budgets and a reduction in other support services as a result of funding cuts. The direct impact of this has been increased pressure on the school system. In the same period, we have seen levels of domestic violence more than double and we are increasingly becoming the place where our families come for help.

Our breakfast club has doubled in size, this morning we fed almost 130 people, we often have more. We do get some financial support to help us run a free breakfast club and it has become such an essential start to the day for many of our families that we can’t afford not run it. Two or three years ago we used to help the occasional family access our local foodbank, now, we are offering food parcels to families on a weekly basis. Then there are the free sanitary towels that we put in the toilets for parents and children. My staff donate these and we can’t keep up.

The funding cuts and reduction in support from external services have also changed the role of my pastoral team. I have two learning mentors and we buy in some additional time from a Cognitive Behaviour Therapist. Whereas, my senior learning mentor used to spend 80-90 per cent of her time working with children in school and 10-20 per cent working with families, that has now reversed and 80-90 per cent of her time is spent, like today, on the phone to social workers, in core group meetings and supporting parents.

Likewise, our CBT worker spends almost 100 per cent of her time working with the parents as it’s hard to get anyone else to do that work. That alone will cost our school £12,000 this year.

So, effectively, schools like ours are propping up other care services because we can’t access the support needed for our families. The consequences for our children if we don’t doesn’t bare thinking about.

Our job descriptions in school talk mainly about teaching and learning, these days, we have to do a whole lot more in order to support our children and their families so that they are in a position to learn and make progress.

To read Monday’s entry click here or for Wednesday click here.