Cuts in schools mean I don’t have 5 minutes to spare for a toilet break

One day, I came into class with my children to discover the floor had caved in. 

There were gaping holes up to a metre down all over the classroom.

We later learned that the water pipes in our 100-year-old school building had corroded and cracked. The resulting flood of water caused the floor to collapse.

So the class had to be evacuated into another room, in a school already squeezed for space.

We’d got used to peeling plaster, and rain leaking into the corridors and halls filled with buckets. But there was no spare money to fix running repairs.

In the winter, heating bills became a challenge. The classrooms have draughty doors and windows and can be freezing cold. 

But after the floor caving in, it was then that I realised I had to speak out.

With less and less sufficient Government funding, the situation in our nation’s schools right now is just unacceptable – and in some cases unsafe. 

For a while, the extra pupil premium money our school received due to the high levels of poverty in our Manchester community helped. But as the funding squeeze has got worse, the cracks are literally too big to cover.

Last year, you may remember many schools were in the news with crumbling concrete. Dangerous school buildings at risk of collapse caused some to close for repairs.

But this was just the most visible symptom of a wider problem. My school didn’t have concrete issues, but our school building is in a terrible state of disrepair. While repair bills are rising due to the age of buildings, funding levels are falling.

On top of that, the lack of money for support staff is less visible than the building. But it has an even worse impact.

I’ve been here 20 years. So I remember the times when we could decorate the classrooms each year.

And when we had enough teaching assistants to ensure that even a large class of over 30 children was well supported by a teacher and TA. We could offer attention for small group work, help for those with additional needs and a nice environment.

Teaching assistants raise the quality of the experience for the whole class. If you’re breaking into small groups to tailor advice and ensure pupils get the most out of the lesson, you need someone else to be supporting the rest of the class.

This isn’t just behaviour management, their role is integral to children’s learning and success at school.

I know one colleague was even cooking batch meals for a family for a couple of months

On a practical basis, educators need a break too if we are going to do our best work. Instead, we are regularly teaching three hours nonstop, heading straight from lessons onto breaktime monitoring duty and then straight back into class again.

The teaching assistant cuts mean we don’t have any adults to cover even a five-minute toilet break in my school.

I love my job and school community. We are a passionate team of staff and many of us have taught at the school for years.

Our school is in an area of Manchester with high levels of deprivation, we have children living in poverty, coming from substandard housing, for whom the school should be a haven. We are also teaching more children with special educational needs.

We’re a tight-knit team but right now staff morale is low.

We know many families sending children to the school need help – we were previously doing all sorts of additional things like helping families with bedding, food and heating.

Some teachers would provide breakfast in the form of cereal bars or fruit to children who came in hungry. We have also had appeals from our in-house family liaison officer for bedding, microwaves, curtains and sometimes USB lights for families who have been rehomed very quickly or are in dispute with landlords.

I know one colleague was even cooking batch meals for a family for a couple of months. Now, not only do staff struggle with the time, but we don’t have the extra money to help children in the way we did.

It hurts to know we can’t give the best experience for the children we teach. Speaking to other teachers and staff in Manchester, I know I am not alone.

Figures from the NEU found that 100 schools couldn’t start school on time because ceilings were falling in – causing classrooms to close. Thousands more schools are listed on their schoolcuts.org.uk site as having lost tens, hundreds of thousands or even a million or more in real-terms budget reductions.

At the same time, funding per pupil has stagnated at 2010 levels in real terms, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. While teacher pay was at about the same real-terms level as in 2001.

I’m still hopeful. I know that with the right resources we can do better.

In my school our best years in terms of children’s happiness, attendance and performance have been when we had enough staff and resources. 

A good school can transform a child’s life. We’re not asking for the moon. We’re just asking for our schools to be properly funded so we can do the work that we joined this profession to do. 

Children aren’t stupid either. They know the investment in their education simply isn’t there.

So this election, please, ask your local candidates to back the funding plan we need to ensure our state schools are a joy to learn and teach in again.

As for our classroom floor that caved in, we moved into the library for about four weeks – but obviously that meant the books were out of bounds for everyone else. The floor was eventually replaced, but took a large part of our budget that I believe had been ring fenced for improving toilets for the children.

If we truly value education as a nation, we wouldn’t be in this position.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing James.Besanvalle@metro.co.uk. 

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