Dear CEO,

It is with considerable sadness that I feel compelled to write to you as an employee of one of the schools in your MAT. As a teacher who has only ever served in schools in areas of considerable deprivation, I find it difficult to contain my feelings of despair with regard to the academy in which I now work.

Whilst I appreciate that overseeing a chain of schools is almost certainly burdensome and comes with considerable pressures and responsibilities, I felt the need to let you know, first hand and from a fellow pedagogue’s point of view, exactly how desperate the situation at our school now is. This missive is not merely the griping of someone who has experienced under-funding and stretched resources time and time over everywhere he has worked, but more from someone who came to work at one of your academies out of a vocational duty; a professional cited in a recent HMI inspection as having a positive impact in a special measures school and who is now finding it more difficult every day to provide the children with an exceptional education due to a lack of resources.

At its most basic level, this is a problem of chairs; a symptom, if you will. However, as we all know, in education it is rarely what you see that is the problem; more what the symptoms of that problem represent.

Only yesterday, whilst teaching 30 students in a room originally built for 20, that I saw once again, single exam desks shoehorned in there to accommodate my Year 11 class. I have to prop several of the desks against the wall as the legs are coming off to add some stability - this leads to some interesting logistical problems first thing in the morning before I can prepare to teach my classes. My desk had to be repaired by the site staff as it was falling apart. Now, it stands proudly upright whilst none of the drawers slot back onto their runners and the chair to go with it is inherently unstable and too dangerous for me to sit on with no replacement available.

I look into the ‘home base’; an area which should be a stimulating open-plan learning space and see that all of the chairs have gone missing. Where have they gone? They’ve been placed in a teaching room as that room’s chairs were no longer fit for purpose and the school doesn’t have the money to replace them. The maths office where the teachers sit to plan, prepare and mark has furniture which is broken and can’t be replaced due to lack of funds. This is not merely about health and safety but more a visual metaphor for the impossible situation which our school has to function within due to historical mismanagement and poor resourcing.

I see a swimming pool, which other local schools have and run successfully at a profit, despite competition from local leisure centres, lying empty and unused rather than echoing with the sound of children enjoying themselves and improving their fitness.

Your recent appointments of interim headteachers have gone some way to steadying what was (and might yet be) a sinking ship. Their dedication and educational wherewithal and willingness to get things done - in spite of what would appear to be consistent obstacles put in their way - show that, even in the most trying circumstances, we are still determined to give the children the best education we can.

So, here we stand at a perfect impasse where we are told that there is no “magic money tree” and that we have to make ends meet where there is no middle; and, indeed, no ends.

I am a teacher because I believe it is a vocation. I care wholeheartedly for the children I teach every day. I want those children to get the very best out of my work to enable them to escape the poverty into which they were born and to succeed at everything they do with my own and my colleagues’ input. We are a dedicated team of talented professionals shackled by a situation which is not of our making and which I believe, more soluble than is made out by the trust.

I also feel that, even in these days of austerity, while the university in our city thrives, its poor relations are dying on their feet.

I would like you to consider the following questions:

How would you feel if your children went to a school that had no chairs for them to sit on?

How do you feel knowing that an academy for which you and your fellow trustees are ultimately responsible, finds itself in that very same situation for the children it serves?

I will teach children while they are sitting on the floor, if necessary.

Yours faithfully, 

A teacher in one of your schools. 

The writer is a teacher in England.

In next week’s Tes magazine, we examine the effect of austerity on our school buildings and talk to the teachers who are struggling to cope as their buildings crumble around them. You can subscribe to Tes here.