If to you, as it does to those of us who work here, it seems grossly unfair that Parkdale children are funded so much less than their peers in other schools, locally and nationally, you might want to support us by contacting your MP or local councillor.
Here in school, leaders and governors have ramped-up their voicing of concerns about this and we’re due to be visited by the Gedling MP Michael Payne later this month.
As previously shared with the community, each Parkdale child attracts less per pupil funding than those in almost any other school we can spot on the Department for Education’s Financial Benchmarking website. This has been the case over many years and we’ve never received an adequate explanation. We could sort of understand more spending per pupil in areas of high deprivation, but notice that we have lower funding than comparable schools in similar and more ‘well-to-do’ areas than ours. Indeed, by our own investigations we have higher levels of economic deprivation in our community than national average.
The National Association of Head Teachers has a long-running campaign here, where you can find our more about the challenges faced, remembering that we compare unfavourably to even the averages cited there.
The National Education Union is running a similar campaign: https://neu.org.uk/press-releases/schools-face-ps630-million-cut-funding-next-year
All schools are under-funded, but, considering the above, us even more so!
The consequence of this is that our budget is increasingly challenging to balance. We offer a lot here, we’d say above and beyond that offered elsewhere. but it is getting harder and harder to maintain that offer, particularly in respect to adult support for children’s learning.
If you feel strongly that your children should be worth as much public money as anyone else’s, we’d encourage you to do what you can to speak up!