Your Schools and Colleges are being squeezed
- The Coalition says the Education budget is protected. But school spending is only protected in real terms if the £2.5bn Pupil Premium is included. This is not extra funding. To pay for the Pupil Premium 60% of primaries and 87% of secondaries will face cuts.
- Ring-fenced funding for specialist secondaries is to be scrapped. QE in Crediton which specialises in Technology and Humanities, and Chulmleigh in Business and Enterprise, each receive about £130,000 a year on top of their normal budgets. The shift away from ring-fenced, guaranteed funding for specialist schools is part of a move to generate funding to increase the numbers of academies and free schools.
- In 2009 Devon was 148th out of 151 in the league table of funding per pupil: £3842 per pupil compared to the national average of £4217 per pupil.
- Last year half of Devon’s schools had a deficit budget, and a fifth of Devon’s secondary schools had to make redundancies. The Coalition will publish settlement figures for local government authorities in early December
- Teaching Assistants and admin staff may be the first to go. The School Support Staff Negotiating Body has been scrapped and terms and conditions will now be determined by employers rather than nationally. This is already happening outside Devon where staff is being asked to take a 2.5 % pay cut.
- DCC have not confirmed whether 16s will continue to receive a transport subsidy. Devon County Council have retained free bus transport for eight to 11 year olds living two miles from school.
- Abolishing EMA has cut up to £30 per week paid direct to poorer 16 to 18 year olds to support them in Further Education.
- Chudleigh is one of four schools in Devon to have their rebuilding programme scrapped. DDC was planning for Queen Elizabeth’s Community College to move to a new site in 2016 funded through the Building Schools for the Future Programme and the sale of existing secondary school sites. One of which could have been the site of a much needed third primary for Crediton
- The possible amalgamation of rural primaries is a real threat to rural communities. There are 4329 rural primaries with rolls of less than 150, and more than a thousand primaries have closed in the last 10 years.
- The Association of Colleges forecasts a 16% cut in Adult Learning
