As the FT has noted, Philip Hammond is to allocate £500 million of extra funds to schools in the budget. However, of thus sum £320 million is to go to 140 new so-called free schools. That is £2.3 million each.
The remaining 24,372 schools in the country will share £180 million, or £7,385 each.
Alternatively, split that £180 million amongst the 8.2 million pupils involved and that's £21.95 per pupil, which is going to make a resounding difference.
Never doubt that big numbers are meant to distract attention, in this case fom blatant dogmatic bias.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
This free schools business cannot be justified when you take into account the pressures that existing schools are under. Again, the Left always get fingered for ‘social engineering’ but what about this policy form the ‘liberal’ Right?
No better in my view and damn sight worse in many ways. The record of Free Schools is already blemished.
Yet another regressive step towards a modern feudalism, where grammar schools can supply a steady stream of lords and masters, while the rest labour on zero hours contracts to service an increasingly divided society. There is no doubt in my mind that this is the society the zealots on the right wish for. How much more of this will we be prepared to accept?
Sadly I think the idea that there might be £21.95 per pupil is likely to be an exaggeration. The backlog for the schools repair and refurbishment is currently running at about £6 billion. I understood that a significant part of this generous allocation will go on repairs so in practice the day-to-day teaching will be even less affected. As this is spread over a year it is likely to come out at well under 50p per pupil per week which won’t even buy them a nice packet of crisps rich in salt and fat.
Why oh why do people want secondary moderns for the majority? Having an even more fragmented education system is not the way to go.
£7,385 wouldn’t even buy a new textbook for every pupil in an average-sized secondary school or stop a teaching assistant being made redundant.