The front page of today’s Gazette has pictures of 27 Borough primary schools, 11 of which will be closed under a bid to slash thousands of pounds of surplus pupil places. With 2100 less children this year and the figure expected to rise to 3000 by 2010, Council chiefs are under pressure to make savings of between £500000 and £1 million per year. Whilst the figures make a compelling case for cutting school numbers, it is the corresponding cull of personnel that worries me. Several of the schools on the list have received excellent Ofsted reports in the last few years, the results of good teaching practise and dedicated staff. But what will happen to these teachers once schools begin to close? Redeployment could be a possibility, but where to? With falling pupil numbers, they will have nobody to teach. Redundancy and retirement is also an option, but think of the waste of years of accumulated experience and knowledge.
Once you start to look at this issue closely, cracks start to appear. What happens if birth rates start to increase again? It only takes four years from birth for children to hit primary school age. If schools have been shut and housing estates built on the land, where will we teach them? Look at rural farms and set aside grants; you cant close a farm down one year and reopen it the next. Why not consider the radical option of actually reducing classroom numbers significantly to promote more pupil orientated teaching practises?
2 comments:
your shop closing has nothing to do with the metro its because it was bland and boring nothing on the shelves and it was vastly expensive compared to other delis in the boldon area! get a life
Why when people post insulting emails do they do it an under the name of “anonymous”.
Never mind, I’ll leave the post on the site such are the trappings of free speech etc.
Of course the shelves are empty, why stock up for this shop when the new one needs filling up.
Expensive, well that’s open for interpretation. You obviously like mutton and Lambrini, whilst we prefer lamb and Chablis, get the message or is it to cryptic!
As to the bit about getting a life, well that’s fair enough. Blogging could be viewed as a pretty mundane existence. But what’s sadder, posting under your own name so everybody knows who you are, or commenting without at least leaving your proper name? At the end of the day, you still visit this site quite frequently according to the statistics linked to your email address.
As for the shop closing having with nothing to do with the Metro. Please come along to the CAF meeting 21 June at Boldon CA and we’ll see who is right. Who knows, David Potts might even turn up, if he can get in. Four newspaper journalists will be there, one with a national syndication. Express your views to him and the public in general.
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