Page 1

Teachers in Wales

From the NUT for all teachers in Wales

Issue 38 Spring term 2011

Funding gap widens again

Children in Welsh schools are missing out as the per capita gap in funding between pupils in Wales and England rises to £604 a year.

NUT Cymru’s Fair Play for Children in Wales campaign led First Minister Carwyn Jones to promise to “spend 1 per cent above the block grant every year until we reach… parity of funding per head of pupils in England”. This pledge has taken a huge knock as the January figures show the gap, which was £527 per pupil, widening.

Achieving parity will plainly require a lot more than the promised 1 per cent. The NUT will press the current administration, and the new Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) when elected in May, to take immediate steps to make it happen.

Inadequate funding creates a series of problems for education in Wales:

• redundancies on top of inadequate staffing levels

• the withdrawal of classroom support

• increases in class size

• reduction of already stretched resources.

NUT General Secretary Christine Blower said: “In November 2009 Carwyn Jones pledged to increase education funding in Wales by 1 per cent a year from 2011 to close this funding gap. The gap grew last year by 14.6 per cent. Clearly the current pledge is too little too late. We urge the WAG to act immediately to redress this disparity.”

Wales Secretary David Evans added: “The gap is a legacy of previous education ministers refusing to recognise its existence. The current minister does recognise the gap, but bizarrely fails to accept its effect on education.”

For more information about the campaign visit www.teachers.org.uk/walesfunding.

See page 2 for NUT Cymru’s Manifesto for Education for May’s Assembly elections.

Join me on 26March!

 “Education is a way out of poverty. If the Government carries out its so-called recovery plan, the casualties will be our children. Cut education and you cut opportunity. That is why I will be marching on 26 March.”

Natasha Semp

• For details of the 26 March demonstration see The Teacher March-April issue.

Inside… Manifesto for education Students join up A rep in every school Twilight training