Playground Equipment For Schools Affected By Spending Review
By: Shawn Cox
Submitted: 2011-10-03 14:17:59 | Word Count: 417
The spending review has announced that there will be more money for schools, with education returning to be a political priority for investment in the UK. This could lead to more playground equipment becoming available for our schools. Approximately 600 schools will be rebuilt or refurbished, meeting the needs of many schools hoping to expand their offerings to children.
With a rise of 4 billion pounds over four years for school funding, taking the rate of inflation into account, translates into just 0.1%. Departmental sources believe schools will little benefit from this once the funds have been funneled through the complex school funding system. Labours education spokesman says that due to the rising number of pupils this increase in schools budget will amount to a real term loss in funding per pupil. Recycling existing funding from one school to another which means that there will be winners and losers with concerns that this will lead to a loss of teaching jobs for around 40,000 teachers across England. The government says that funding for this extra money will come from cuts to the welfare budget rather than the educational budget which faces an overall cut of up to 12%. It has also been voiced that capital spending will be cut by 60% by 2014 after the scrapping of the Building Schools for the Future programme. So authorities will be hard pressed to build classrooms for the increasing number of pupils. Schools also get vital funding and support services from local authorities, which are being hit by drastic cuts. Many will struggle to afford to help schools support children with special needs, or run truancy units. Schools will have to dip into their own funds to pay for these essential services. Sports and arts were hit with massive headline cuts of 30%.
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Sports clubs that had been hoping to invest in improvements such as new artificial grass pitches or refurbished changing rooms, will likely have their plans scrapped. However proposed changes to National Lottery funding has left sports administrators more positive. Parents across the country were left appalled by the potential damage this has caused to keeping their youngsters fit and healthy. With only 2 in approximately 5 children playing competitive sport regularly within their school, and only one in 5 playing regularly against another school, the government agree that we should encourage more competitive sport which is a "vibrant part of the life and ethos of all schools."
