Gordon Brown

[marshlander]

But the government are suggesting that every school in england need exactly the same and they are treating them exaclty the same.

The aim of conservatives are to hand power over to that individual school, letting them do what is needed for the community that the school is in.

But I agree in some way with letting it settle for a while.

That was the aim of the conservatives before and it caused chaos and resentment and took a lot of funding away from the schools that weren't big enough to operate without the support of the local authority. The whole Grant Maintained Status fiasco was a massive triumph of ideology over fairness and common sense. Some schools did very well out of it, while many lost out massively. That was the period when the decimation of school music services began.

I agree that schools should have freedom in how they spend money, but they also need to be accountable and there have to be safeguards for those that need support to ensure fairness in the system. It's ridiculous expecting a school with a teaching staff of 2.5 (yes, two point five) to fulfil the same administrative functions as a school with a staff of thirty. There are not the hours in the day and most school secretaries do not have enough working hours to keep up with the work that exists already without giving them more to do that will be the inevitable result of further responsibilities.