Did you hear the news about English schools cutting down the school weeks to four days? It turns out, more than 200 schools can’t afford to teach students for a full school week (five days).
Crisis in education funding in England has provoked many teachers, principals, students, and parents. And it was just a matter of time for protests to come around.
One of the affected of the current situations is Labour MP, Jess Philips’ son from Birmingham primary. And the march dedicated to protesting current education funding, organized by Philips, will take the event on July 5.
Philips decided to drive the point to the government’s attention by putting her son and his friend Morris at the front while they’re doing their homework. This picture is to remind the government of their responsibility towards children and their education.
What does the education funding crisis do to schools?
Students stated that they’d often be sent home to have lunch because schools were trying to save money.
Around 200 schools have already launched the four day school week and four and a half day school week. The rest are considering to introduce the new school week due to the circumstances.
Parents are in rage. The issues come by one another. Not only students are left out, but raging parents are looking for different schools, and the school staff that already introduced short school weeks are threatened to lose their jobs and/or pay.
The government sees this issue differently. They say that the current problems only concerns Birmingham. But their statement is far away from the truth. Philips disagrees.
“The problem is in Stockport, Oxford, Cambridgeshire, Berkshire – there was one in Theresa May’s [Maidenhead] constituency – Bournemouth, London, Leicester, Sandwell.”
SOS – Save our Schools is a campaign group to support schools and their budgets. Their report stated that by shortening the school weeks to four days, pupils would lose 20 days of education in a whole school year.
What does the Department of Education have to say about the education funding crisis?
When asked to comment on current circumstances, the Department of Education stated that the fact that schools are shortening the school weeks has always been a choice. They say that the schools were ever allowed to rearrange the structure of their learning process. They also mentioned that Birmingham’s funding should be able to cover a full five days of the school week for each student, blaming the fault on the headteacher’s incompetence.
