A furious MP has asked prime minister Theresa May to pick up her son from primary school on Friday afternoons after it was revealed the school can’t afford to stay open due to lack of funding.
Jess Phillips, MP for Birmingham Yardley, tweeted extracts from an emotional letter sent to parents by the headteacher of her son’s school in which the head spoke of her “deep regrets” over the proposed closure and “devastating” prospect of stopping complex needs provision.
The letter, seen in full by Tes, states that owing to the National Funding Formula, raw funding per pupil has dropped by more than 7 per cent this year at the school, which Tes is not naming.
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It says cost-savings have already been made by increasing class sizes in key stage 2, reducing staffing, limiting trip subsidy, postponing the purchase of non-essential resources and only having minimal grounds/building maintenance.
The letter prompted Ms Phillips to send a string of angry tweets to the Prime Minister in which she said she would leave her son on the steps of 10 Downing Street. She also offered to organise coaches for parents whose children’s schools shut early on a Friday so they could leave them in the foyer of the Department for Education.
Using the hashtag #fuckyourlittleextras - with reference to chancellor Philip Hammond’s widely derided offer of £400m for schools to spend on “little extras” - the Labour MP tweeted to both education secretary Damian Hinds and Theresa May with extracts from the letter.
The letter reads: “As we have already reduced staffing and services to the minimum level we consider safe to operate, we are therefore now forced to consider even more unpalatable options. We are proposing to close early to pupils on Fridays (1pm), with effect from September 2019.”
Ms Phillips also threatened to approach the Equality and Human Rights Commission over the headteacher’s announcement that the school was considering stopping provision for children with complex needs and this was “devastating... as this provision is absolutely central to the school’s ethos.”
Although the head states in the letter that the school will be exploring options for onsite childcare - paid for by parents - up to 3pm, Phillips tweeted: “Every parent whose children’s school shuts early on a Friday how about I get some coaches and we can leave our kids one Friday afternoon in the foyer of the @educationgovuk Up for it?”
As reported in the local press, more than 10 Birmingham schools are closing early on a Friday to save money, while Vale View Primary in Stockport is among 25 schools nationally that are shortening the school week to cut costs, according to The Guardian.
A DfE spokesperson said: “Any changes made to the school day need to be reasonable and parents need to be adequately consulted before changes are made, so that they can make alternative arrangements for childcare.
“We have protected the core schools budget overall in real terms since 2010, and put an additional £1.3bn into core schools funding across 2018-19 and 2019-20, over and above plans set out at the last Spending Review. IFS figures show the average primary school class receives £132,000 of funding. And that funding per pupil in primary schools will be up by 8 per cent in 2019-20, compared to 2009-10.”
