This year, heads and teachers will really begin to feel the squeeze as their budgets are tightened…even more than last year – and even more than the year before that.

Education is an area most picked on. The area politicians can cut down on the most because they can rely on the loyalty and skill of teachers to get  the children through.  Most of our nation’s teachers will stand in front of clapped out interactive whiteboards helping this generation of children to grow into intellectually and hopefully well informed adults.

We can be jolly sure politicians will go into the next elections making claims about having reduced the size of the budget without having damaged standards – totally unaware that they have damaged morale.

If only teachers could teach in attractive surroundings a little more like a gallery than a prison. Not only would they enjoy the experience of teaching more but so would the children they teach.

A vase of flowers in a corner somewhere would help as would a Nespresso style coffee maker… Bring the perks and luxuries people enjoy in industry to the classroom and staff room, please!

Say goodbye to the crumbling buildings and out of date furniture. But instead, in reality, Heads will have to battle on as will teachers, because that is what they do. They will continue to help pupils who don’t think the state believes in them enough to invest in them.

The hugely respected Institute for Fiscal studies with it’s politically neutral stance has calculated that schools are looking at a real budget cut of up to 12% over the next 5 years. Pushing more and more pupils into private education as the failing NHS pushed people into private medicine. Something I myself now feel is an essential part of 2016 life. More and more teachers leave state schools for private schools or jobs in industry. Hence the recruitment crisis we are experiencing.

So, the crisis in supplying good teachers continues, making it really hard to recruit new entrants to the profession in England on wages to match those in the private sector. So we have to search for teachers abroad, taking on the problem this brings.

What are your views?

Until next time,

Elisa