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NEWS • VIEWS • INFORMATION • ADVICE





More budget gloom for Northern Ireland Schools



Schools in Northern Ireland will face a budgetary shortfall of around £150 million by 2014/15, the Department of Education Northern Ireland (DENI) has warned.



Education Minister John O’Dowd [above] has published details of the future funding position for schools over the next three years, which forecasts huge cuts in school budgets in Northern Ireland.



The Minister has warned that job losses are likely in schools as a result of the cuts, which he says are due to the major reduction in funding allocated by the Westminster Government.



In real terms, £60 million will be lost from schools’ budgets in 2012/13 compared to this academic year. This will increase to around £150 million by 2014/15.



The DENI has instituted a savings plan to seek to minimise the impact on frontline services and Mr O’Dowd has asked officials to carry out a review of the education budget over the next three years with a primary focus on delivering additional funding for the classroom to try to mitigate some of the financial pressure on schools. However, it is evident that there will be severe pressure on schools and teachers as a result of the financial squeeze. Apart from the threat to teachers’ jobs, the budgetary squeeze is also likely to place greater workload pressures onto teachers, as they will inevitably be expected to do more with even less resources. As teachers in Northern Ireland already have inferior working conditions and pay levels compared to colleagues in England and Wales, the impact of these cuts is likely to be severe. The NASUWT has been in discussions with the Minister over the budget and will continue to argue for greater support for schools and teachers to ensure they can continue to provide a high-quality education for their pupils.



MASTERS PLAN FEAR



Plans to introduce a master teacher standard could be divisive and lead to major adverse changes in pay.



A Coalition-commissioned Review, which has been accepted by Michael Gove, has recommended scrapping the post-threshold (UPS), Advanced Skills Teacher (AST) and Excellent Teacher (ET) posts and replacing them with a new master teacher standard.



To gain the standard, teachers will have to demonstrate deep and extensive knowledge of their specialism, command of the classroom and have excellent planning and organisational skills. The authors of the Review say the master standard will ‘set out a powerful statement about what it means to be a really excellent teacher’. The NASUWT is concerned that there remains a question mark over what it will mean for pay and conditions of service. The Union is seeking further details about the plans, particularly what the emphasis on subject specialism will mean for primary teachers, who could be seriously disadvantaged by this move.





Military Academies: ‘National Service for the poor’



The NASUWT has rejected suggestions from a think-tank that military academies should be established to tackle criminality and antisocial behaviour among young people.



A Report by ResPublica recommended that the military be drafted in to set up and run academy schools in areas of deprivation as a solution to the issue of young people who are not in education, employment or training (NEET).



The Report suggests that areas hit by last summer’s riots may particularly benefit from the creation of military academies, an assertion that the NASUWT dismissed as ‘cynical’.



“There is no evidence of either the widespread involvement of people from deprived, working class communities in the riots or that they instigated them,” said the NASUWT’s General Secretary, Chris Keates.



“The proposal amounts to nothing more than the disgraceful, unjustified vilification of whole communities, promulgating the view that if you are poor and working class, you must, therefore, be inclined to criminality and antisocial behaviour.”



She denounced the idea as “national service for the poor”, adding: “the answer lies not in this report but in the abandonment of the fundamentally flawed economic and social policies of this Government, which are disempowering, alienating and disenfranchising young people.”