THE government claims that there’s more money being put into schools than ever before, and its £49 billion figure does sound impressive, until you learn that Britain’s statistics watchdog have taken it to task several times over the misleading nature of this claim.

In reality, £49bn is actually an 8 per cent cut in spend per pupil. This is the largest cut to education spending in 30 years.
This has led to increased class sizes, the narrowing of the curriculum, the loss of arts and sport, the erosion of our role as professionals, and when all of that fails and we still can’t balance the books, redundancies. Recent reported examples include one secondary school in North Yorkshire raising funds by holding non-uniform days at the end of each half term — potentially earning an additional £3,000 for the school’s funds.

Teachers in Somerset are doing cleaning duties as cleaning staff have been cut. Photocopying is strictly rationed, pastoral care and mental health support has been cut, and teachers are asked to teach subjects outside their specialism. Pupils with special educational needs or disability (SEND) are getting less attention because of cuts to teaching and support staff, with schools concentrating their remaining resources on those with the highest levels of disability.

The primary school to which I’ve applied for my own son recently sent out a notice to parents asking them to fill a smarties tube with 20p pieces and donate the few pounds collected. They’re literally having to make a game out of it.

These stories all help give you some idea of what’s going on at the chalkface, but we can’t look at school cuts in isolation. Everything the government has done is set against a backdrop of astonishing cruelty. Austerity has seen all of the support structures that used to prop up families in need stripped away. Family services, SureStart and libraries have all been cut to the bone. Benefit cuts mean we’re seeing more and more children living in poverty and despite the enormous challenges schools themselves are facing, they have been left to pick up the pieces in this purposeful fracturing of society.

Teachers like myself may be well-intentioned, but we are not counsellors. We are not social workers. We are not nurses, we are not doctors. We are not solicitors capable of advocating on behalf of the families we serve against an unjust system set up to confuse and trap the vulnerable. We may be capable of many things, but we cannot begin to do enough to feel as though we’re making a difference. It is any wonder then that morale is at an all-time low?

More teachers are leaving within the first five years of qualifying than ever before. Teacher training has been mostly taken out of university hands, those hotbeds of independent thought and intellectual improvement seemingly not appropriate for an ever more politicised group of workers.

Student teachers are often now school based, paid an unqualified teacher’s wage and disenfranchised from their own professional development. There is a recruitment and retention crisis, and for those of us still in work, we are seeing more and more colleagues teaching who are not actually qualified to do so, further eroding our profession, and devaluing what we do.

The people most affected by all of this are of course the most vulnerable. The children I teach are from one of the most deprived and impoverished areas of the country. My school has seen redundancies, increased class sizes, the loss of support staff, subjects vanishing from the curriculum. My subject more than many others has suffered under this government and the coalition before it.

I could wax lyrical about the many benefits an art education brings our students. The benefits that creativity has in the workplace. The boost to self-esteem, mental health and emotional wellbeing that an imagination encouraged and a skill improved has for children.
Instead all I’ll tell you is this: art, drama, dance, music – none of these subjects are being cut from fee-paying private schools. No child of means has to suffer their loss. Their value is known and celebrated. Art encourages freedom of thought and expression, and it has been stolen from the poor.

This brings us to the very heart of the argument. It’s not austerity. None of this is a cost-saving exercise: that’s merely a financial bonus in the pursuit of their true goal. Everything they have done since getting into power has been an ideological assault on the poor. They have set about destroying the aspirations and ambitions of every poor and working-class child in the country, and they have been relentless in their aim.

I’ll end with a personal story.

Today at my school, colleagues in our sister union took industrial action over the management of pupil behaviour. This has been a long running issue, and has been worsening in line with each layer of support being stripped away in the community. Despite many improvements secured through consultation, the problems continue with the behaviour of struggling children who are lacking support.

On learning that one of the teaching unions was taking strike action for a second time this term, one of my year 7 students asked me how long I had been working at his school, and how many times staff had been on strike. I answered that although my own union had taken national action several times, there had never been a strike against the school itself. He looked horrified, and said “so we must be really bad then? The worst behaved year group ever, for them to be doing this.”

Trying to explain to an 11-year-old with learning difficulties the difference between pupil behaviour and the school’s management of pupil behaviour is not easy. This child didn’t understand the reasons for the strike, and internalised them, thinking that he and his friends are naughty and made the teachers angry. But he plucked up the courage to ask the question. Consider then, how many of my students have internalised the same misunderstanding, but aren’t brave enough to ask.

When I was a child I had the good fortune of a Labour government who came along at just the right time. I had EMA to allow me to stay on for sixth form and buy my uniform. They paid for my first ever overseas trip – to Paris with my A Level Art class. My government paid for me to go to the Musee d’Orsay, the Louvre, the Rodin Museum. For the first time I saw some of the greatest artworks ever made.

I went on to study History of Art, and later a PGCE, taking me back into school only to see everything that propped me up, held my hand, and led me through the muddy waters of an impoverished childhood into success and security, taken away from every child that I had the privilege of teaching.

Children can’t just leave their poverty at the school gates. It stays with them throughout the school day, and throughout their lives, casting a shadow over everything they do. At this late stage we don’t need additional funding for schools; it’s too late for that. We need a clear vision for education, and for a fairer society. We need a change of government.

Sarah Kilpatrick is a teacher and trade unionist. This article is adapted from a speech she gave on the People’s Assembly’s Broken Britain national tour.