RECENT letters/articles on the lack of funding for the council and schools is an issue where action is long overdue. 


I was pleased that the plight of negative balances in schools, especially for the coming years, has been highlighted by some councillors at a recent meeting.


As a chair of Governors at Chapel End and a Governor at Mill Green, plus a Schools Forum member I see first hand the problems of the cuts.

I am pleased to see that the NAHT and, belatedly, the teacher unions are beginning to highlight this.


The majority of primary schools in the next years are looking at deficit budgets, some more than £10K and others more than £100K, which they are prevented from setting.

This means redundancies of teachers and teaching assistants. The latter are charged with supporting pupils with special needs.


Indeed, the so called support plans become a joke when the “guaranteed” hours a pupils gets is watered down due to the loss of a TA or them having to be deployed to support others in the school.

Parents are being misled through no fault of the schools.


My own school, in an attempt to have what is known as a “recovery plan,” we are having to close and mothball half of the school and move the KS1 into the KS2 area where we have empty classrooms due to falling rolls.


We cannot afford to clean and heat it. This will only address a small part of our deficit. I am becoming of the view that losing perfectly good teachers and TAs has come to an end.

I look forward to a joint fightback by schools, governors,  teacher unions, officers and councillors together with our MPs, saying enough is enough.


A Freedom of Information (FOI) would alert the public of the size of the problem. I am getting tired hearing from the Government  that “we are spending more and more on education by £xm”.

That claim is not supportable when schools look at their budgets.We need to make a stand and I look to our council alongside many other councils to start the fightback. Our children deserve better.

Bill Bradbury, Billinge