Hundreds of teachers from across London have marched in protest against what they say is a lack of funding that is crippling our schools.
Major unions including the NEU and NUT led their members on a protest calling on Chancellor Philip Hammond to reverse cuts in school funding, and give staff pay rises in line with pay review recommendations.
It comes after the Chancellor faced a huge backlash after announcing a £400m funding "bonus" which he said would "buy the little extras" schools need.
The "march for education" assembled at Westminster Cathedral in Victoria Street on November 20 and was linked to other protests up and down the country.
Ahead of the protests, Get West London spoke to Ealing Union representatives and school head teachers to see how badly hit our schools really are.
The secondary school head teacher
The head of a large Ealing secondary school, who asked not to be named, told us that many things which used to be taken for granted are being cut because of a lack of funds.
He said: "Budgets have been reduced in real terms between 10 and 12%.
"Every year it’s a struggle to break even. Schools usually try to shield cuts from their staff as long as possible but many schools have had to make staffing cuts and that increases the workload on everyone else.
"Staffing is really the only way to save money in the future. It will be the support staff such as teaching assistants who are cut and that will leave classes with one member of staff and very little support for pupils.
"This also increases the workload on everyone else and takes the focus away from developing really exciting, great lessons.
"We’ve had to cut swimming lessons for Year 7 pupils, work experience for Year 10s and Duke of Edinburgh. These may not be the most crucial things, but they are often the most memorable for pupils."
He added: "We had an absolutely fantastic Japanese teacher who got the pupils doing so well and helped some get into Oxford and Cambridge but we lost her because of lack of funding.
"We had five art teachers and now we’re down to two.
"We keep the core subjects such as science, English and maths, but many of the option subjects have to go which reduces the choice for pupils.
"The recent government publicity saying schools were getting extra cash was frankly fake news. The fact is, it's capital expenditure so we can’t use it for staff or for books, and it has to be spent by the end of this financial year. It was £400m of publicity."
The mental health of pupils is also suffering, the head teacher claimed.
He explained that it takes between a year and 18 months for a pupil to get referred for mental health support through the Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS).
"Some pupils are frankly not too far from being sectioned and they are having to wait," he said.
"They will have left school by the time they move up the waiting list. Also to get support through CAMHS immediately you have to prove that you have considered suicide. What kind of First World country waits until young people attempt suicide before helping them?"
Staff pay is also a massive bone of contention.
The union secretary
Stefan Simms, who is Ealing NEU-NUT Section Divisional Secretary and National Executive Member for Outer London, said that this year, for the first time, the Department for Education went against the suggestions of the independent pay review body which recommends pay settlements for teachers.
He says school leaders got the lowest pay rise across the whole of the public sector.
The primary school head
A head teacher of an Ealing primary school, who did not want to give his name, says he has huge fears about cuts to support for pupils with special educational needs (SEN).
He said: "Eight per cent of funding per pupil has been cut between 2009 and 2017. This means classroom teachers and support staff are having to pick up the pieces and provide the support that used to be provided by extra SEN staff.
"Effectively they are stealing money from pupils who don’t have additional needs and using the money to support those who do.
"There’s less money to support higher needs pupils. Ealng lost £1.2m of money last year that was meant to support higher needs pupils or money that was meant for art lessons or music lessons. Another £1.2m will be siphoned off in 2019.
"Schools are already losing staff and 13 or 14 of them in Ealing are running on deficit budgets.
"Any responsible government should be investing in our future leaders and workforce of the country, not making token gestures for some extras."
The heads are also very concerned about the extensive focus on testing pupils and they say £5.5m has been "wasted" by the government developing new multiplication tests which they say is a pointless exercise and is "nothing that good classroom teachers won’t already do".
More recent Ealing news
Mr Simms has co-ordinated letters from 27 schools in Ealing to the borough’s three MPs asking them to call on Philip Hammond for more funding.
The NEU is also currently balloting its members to see if they will carry out strike action.
If they vote in favour it will take place early next year, neatly timed to coincide with Brexit.
It could be the first time in living memory that teachers have gone on strike for more than one day in a row.
The council education leader
Councillor Yvonne Johnson who is Ealing Council's cabinet member for schools and children’s services, said: "Ealing’s teachers and heads do an incredible job delivering a great education for our children, but they are fully justified in feeling let down by this government, and the Budget in particular.
"In this borough alone, our schools will see cuts of more than £7m over the next two years, on top of tens of millions of cuts already imposed thanks to Tory austerity.
"The Chancellor’s insultingly small sum of money for schools in the budget amounts to just a few thousand pounds per school and doesn’t come close to reversing the impact of past or future cuts.
"For Philip Hammond to talk about this funding 'little extras' is downright insulting – this is about schools not having the money for sufficient teachers, classroom assistants, support staff or learning resources.
"The government needs to stop treating education funding as a joke and commit to a long-term funding settlement for our schools that will give them the financial security and certainty they need to reverse the impacts of government cuts and to provide the teachers, staff and resources they desperately need."
The Department for Education has been approached for a comment but has not yet supplied one.
