Ep 182: Are Schools Finally At Financial Breaking Point?

0:00 Hello everyone, I got back to another episode of Teach Stick Repeat. My name is Dylan and my name Hayden and I've got absolutely no idea what this episode is about. I know I've got an iPad in front of me. And you don't? No, no. Go on, context. What did you say there? So basically I right, I watched a video on Instagram which I'll talk about in a minute, and it made me think, oh, I kind of want to discuss this with Dylan. I was about to send it to you and I thought, no, we're going to record a podcast later. It'll be quite fun to just have the conversation I would have had with you over Messenger or something right on the podcast. So what we can do is follow podcast bro culture and have some of absolutely no research spout and nonsense. That can be me, I don't. Know I didn't think that I was like it'd be interesting to just get your thoughts. You you read more you absorb more than me anyway in general and I think you're you're just more opinionated. You're more.

0:43 In, in, in, in. You're more insufferable. You're more happy with your ignorance. Yeah, I was going. To go through intelligent. But intelligent? Yeah, Sorry, I was thinking of arrogant. But intelligent? Yeah. No, no, it's quite fun. Two sides. Of the same. Coin, this is where we're very different. So if you know, if you know as well, maybe you've got it through the podcast. I don't know, but I like to meticulously plan things. Oh yeah. And Dylan quite likes to just go off the Dome and talk about things, so I knew you'd be all right with the idea of me just. I quite liked it. Having a look at something and thinking, yeah, you can just give me your. Reaction. Not on my iPad. Everyone who watches anyone watches the podcast knows I've always got my iPad on me. I genuinely have no clue what's about to happen. People clicking. Well, because the title, yeah, probably away. Yeah. But the context of this conversation is, I don't know, you've done the research.

1:26 Exactly. Let's go so back to that Instagram video I was talking about. It was just a clip from a panel of people talking on the news. It had an EU representative there, had a head teacher and had a couple of other people. And it was quite a short clip. And they were just basically talking about the fact that schools once again are at breaking point. There's no money left that any you person was, you know, very much saying the, the the 2025 pay rise, yeah, 4% is great, but it's not fully funded. It was partially funded. And it's sort of like a dig at the constant, constant, constant partially funded or unfunded pay rises that have happened basically since 2010. And he was saying we are at absolute breaking point. Schools cannot find any more money. There's nothing left in the budget. This is ridiculous. We just can't do this. And when I was watching it, I, I genuinely thought maybe a bit controversial.

2:10 I was like, is this the clip from this year or the year before or the year before or the year before or the year before? I was like, I've heard this exact same line. Honest to God for my entire career, any single year you put me out of pick me out of my career and I'll find someone on the news saying we are at absolute breaking point. There is nothing left in school budgets. We can't do this unfunded pay rise. The unfunded pay rise happens anyway or partially funded and then school goes on and then next year comes around, it happens again happens again. And it genuinely LED me down the thought train of, are they just wrong? Because I've always said this, I've always been fully on that side of, yeah, we're at breaking point. But there's only so many years in a row we can be at absolute breaking point where nothing could possibly go right for schools just to function for another year.

2:51 And it happened again before, I think, when we said it eight years ago. Yeah. Were we exaggerating? That's pretty interesting. So that's the kind of point I want to talk about and I kind of want to get your initial reaction to that. So do you feel like we've been hearing schools are on the brink of collapse? Yeah, for basically the entire time we've. Been. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, when you first described it, before you even said what you thought, my first thought was also, wow, still beating that drum like it was, it was Jane, my first thought. I think there's a lot of there's so much going on here. It's a really interesting chat because if you think about what we're defining as breaking point, probably is constantly changing, right. So what we would say, you know, let's just pick a, I'm going to pick a random date in the year 2017.

3:33 Yeah, let's just say at that point someone probably from the unions were saying we're at breaking point. We can't possibly carry on. During those years. We weren't actually getting pay rises as a profession. So, so it was just cracking on as normal. So maybe if you Fast forward a bit more to when teachers actually start to get a bit more of a pay rise, but it wasn't fully funded every year. You're right. It's that it's that narrative of we can't cope with this, we can't cope with this. We're at breaking point. We're at breaking point, I would say five years down the line, we're at the point that was described as breaking point. It's just now we're re describing breaking and and having a new definition of breaking point. Because if you look, you know, if you actually look at what happens every year, it isn't just, oh, actually we got away with that and it was OK and and we were wrong. It's we've reset what normal is and we can't fathom you going further and then we go further again.

4:17 Then we reset what normal is again. Then we reset what normal is again. If you go back to just the start of my career and I'm talking mid twenty 10s, the amount of I'm going to just look at one example now, which is support staff compared to now is genuinely like a skeleton crew when you look at what support was actually available in the classroom. So at that point it would be breaking point. I think to envisage what's happening now, you'd be thinking what? But we just cope with it now and we got on with it. What is breaking point? It's like it's worse for the kids. Yeah, but is it the school is suddenly doesn't function OK when? OK, if that's your definition of breaking point, we're not going to get there. And even if even if you know, in the next couple of years, I saw something recently about I think schools can only afford 2.7% or something like that in terms of affordability for the next year or two for pay rises. But obviously teachers are going to want more. So either will come out of the budget or it has to be funded. If that does, I don't think, let's say teachers get a four or 5% pay rise, but it's not fully funded. Yeah, they'll be the narrative of we're at breaking point, but will we reach breaking point after? No, but we'll have fewer support staff. We'll have less money for trips.

5:21 We'll have less enrichment for our children. Sure, things will take a hit, but the school system will still run, which ultimately means people will point out the NEU and people on these panels and say, see, we're not breaking, we're fine and it justifies bad decisions. Actually that I was going to say, do you think that rhetoric that may be quote, exaggeration of, of the meaning of breaking point perhaps that rhetoric, do you think in any way it's undermined progression of teacher pay and funding of schools? Because people are hearing that and then the next year they're saying, oh, everything seems to be functioning, though they don't maybe know some of the cuts that happened, but they they just see for the school from a service level and say, well, the school's still open. So was the NEU person lying? Do you think it undermines it at all? Potentially, potentially, but sometimes you have to go over the top.

6:06 Even in our situation, we know that where we have to think about hooks just to get people listening in the 1st place. And then maybe the nuance comes even a minute into our video, for example, right? But you have to think of ways to grab attention. And if the unions plodded along saying, oh, that's frustrating, but schools would cope. They can't say that line. If you're, if you're, if you're in the opposite position of the government, the role of the union is to is to be the voice in the extreme, the other way. That's the role of the union, right. I will. I'm being completely genuine now where a lot of the time, despite me always backing the Union a lot of the time, in my opinion, in my raw base opinion, I think they go too far the other way sometimes in terms of their rhetoric and their language, right, Right.

6:48 But I think it's the right thing for them to do, and they're doing their role, sure. You think that's that is they have to do that. They're supposed to be the extreme exactly version of that side of the argument. Precisely. And quite often, I think you're not doing your job enough. You need to be more extreme. Yeah, not because I necessarily hold the view that for example, I don't actually think teachers should get, I don't think it's reasonable or something I expect for teachers to get full restorative pay within a year if you compare to their their salaries in the 90s or the OR the naughties, right. I don't think that's realistic and I don't think it's what I would actually push for because I don't think it can happen. However, I do think the union should be much closer to that as that being their starting point, because you have to have an extreme starting point if your role is to represent the profession and defenders because it's a negotiation then.

7:32 So, so I, I actually fully think that it's, it's very similar, not to talk politics too much, but you see the rise of reform over the last few years and I think it's a net good thing genuinely for the country and the rhetoric of, of political discourse to have a much stronger far left party in, in the discourse. Now do I First I'll talk, I'll talk politics very briefly in terms of I absolutely don't support reform, but I do also think that the Green Party in many aspects are far are too far the other way in terms of what I think would genuinely work for the country. Right. So in in my politics, I'm I'm between those two parties. I don't need to go into exactly where I am. I'm definitely more left-leaning in general, but I, I think discourse was just yearning for that voice of just just be the extreme the other way.

8:18 So at least we can have this as a discussion and more people will land somewhere in the middle, which I think is more healthy for the country. Sure. I I think it's it's a similar kind of idea at the end of year in the unions. They have to be pushing it. The the unions can't be seen to be saying oh it's not a breaking point would cope. It's frustrating. As soon as they say that the government will sniff blood. OK, it's fine, yeah, OK, it's fine. It's not a breaking .0 God, thank goodness. So whilst I think my base opinion is that probably, you know, it clearly isn't breaking point right? If it's happened 6 times in a row and we're still not OK. But I I think it's the right thing to do to push for as much as you can possibly get in the right direction ultimately for the children of the country. Yeah, yeah. I guess my worry is maybe public perception is more altered by the idea that they care something I don't know.

9:04 I, I think so. I think public perception of teachers because it's a public service, I think for, for a lot. Do you? Think it's bad though. Do you think it's actually bad? Like just cutting through the nonsense? Not nonsense. Cutting through the the trope of, you know, teachers are hated and we've literally done stuff before about why a lot of people hate teachers. Yeah, I think the vast majority of people really respect our profession. I think maybe the loudest people are the most disrespectful. Maybe, but do what makes you think that matters a lot? Like do you think that matters more than than what I've just explained as to why I think the NEU should be more extreme in that version? Do you think public perception outweighs that and therefore the NEU should draw back? I don't know. I mean, I'm torn to be honest with you. I don't know whether it outweighs it or not, but I do think it's quite significantly important. I think public perception of teaching and public services in general, I do think it's really important because we the public shapes things like if enough people are backing a certain professional, certain idea, things get things change when they're when they're easily manipulated by media because some someone takes what any you guys said as a headline and says, see that didn't Oh, he said this and three years ago, 1 breaking point then isn't breaking point now. Teachers wanted that at home doing nothing. They already get 13 weeks off.

10:07 Right. And that imagine that influences hundreds of thousands of people. And I go, yeah, actually it's rubbish. My kid went to school then I'm still going to school now. I'm not seeing any difference. Like this is ridiculous. Teachers are stupid and it goes down this whole avenue. I think. I personally think that's important in terms of driving change to have at least a certain proportion of the public on your side. And I don't think enough of the public are on our side. It's just my gut feeling. Obviously. And if you want to make change in politics, ultimately politicians, whether we like it or not, the system at players that they're winning votes, they're winning minds. And if there's no appetite to help that, then I can imagine quite a few people will just turn a blind eye to them. I even look at, I genuinely even look at the current government now, which traditionally would be more on the side of education and probably is making decisions that other governments wouldn't. I still, it's not going nearly far enough and we're still having these conversations.

10:52 So ultimately my point is, yeah, there's only so far public perception can go. We've got to the government now, which are traditionally like more, more sympathetic towards education and support it more and, and, and have more supporters in education and we're still not getting far enough. So my view is like to me, therefore we have to be dramatic, I think. And when we're looking at a discussion with the government and a negotiation, we have to start further along. That's fair enough. I want to pick up on something you said. This is a bit of script so you know can you can imagine I'm quite nervous now, but off my. Subscriptions at the start, they know. And you're and you're loving it. I can see you're in your in your. Own I am I like thinking on the spot your own maybe when it's released in some more questions me I'll be like I didn't think of that, but this is all off the Dome it's. Part part fun, isn't it?

11:34 And we'll address it in another episode if. You need to and everything I'm saying is completely right, so yeah. Could possibly be otherwise. Right. No, I'm enjoying this. I like this. Earlier on in the conversation, this is a bit bit different, but you, you said that you understand that it's not actually necessarily realistic in your opinion that we go for like restorative pay in one year, like teachers get suddenly a 20% pay rise, even though the any you and and unions in general are sort of fighting for that. Are they? But they certainly say it, they're not. It's it's in. But they're not fighting for that. Just to be clear. I, I, they're absolutely. I've not seen that anywhere. As in for one year? But my but yeah, but my example is they should be pushing like at the front of the paper for that. Sure. OK. So even with that in mind, you know, it's slightly worded it wrong there, But the idea that maybe they're slightly more extreme views, you don't necessarily always think that that's exactly what we should do right now. Or you think there's maybe an element of realism that sometimes overrides it a little.

12:24 Bit exactly that maybe ideologically I think that's exactly the right thing to do, yeah. But I don't actually personally think like I I I can sympathise to an extent of what I ideologically believe to be true and the right thing to do isn't necessarily realistically going to. Happen tomorrow yeah because it's because like the restraints put some budget like that would be a lot of money and significant amount to do in one step right If you were to say we need a 20% pay rise this year like it's huge there's a lot of teachers. Do you feel the same about maternity pay? Because recently you I've quite openly, I think sort of even in our silly skit with on Instagram. And I think you've had, you've mentioned it a few times in the podcast as well about the, the doubling of maternity pay from 4 weeks to 8 weeks for pay, right? You've openly, I'd say shunned that in terms of not that it's objectively a bad thing to have more, but you have very quickly been like, it's not really good enough though, is it? When the, when the people that are saying this get 26 weeks, the DfE themselves, do you still sympathise in that situation with the idea that, yeah, but it's because there's hundreds of thousands of teachers, the vast majority are women. And it would be a massive, massive, massive cost. Even if ideologically we would love to say the DfE who are significantly smaller in numbers than the amount of teachers in the country.

13:33 It's easy for them to have 26 weeks because it's because it's not like they've got hundreds of thousands of them, whereas they they simply can't make that decision. Do you sympathise with that at all, or do you think they should just do better? No, I do sympathise with it, but I think there's, I think this is a on a, on a scale like that, we really need to contextualise in terms of when I'm saying about restorative pay and that's a huge jump. Obviously I don't think it can happen tomorrow. I'm also saying the NEU should be on that line and pushing for as much as they possibly can. Sure. I think with maternity pay it's exactly the same. The NEU should be at the front forefront and including people like us. To be fair. I personally think in terms of a family and maternity, I find it that to me is like next level level important in terms of the ability to raise the next generation yourself.

14:14 Like in terms of the scale of importance, I think that's huge and it's just relative to your own income as well. So I just think it should, it should just be that if a family are having a baby, there's a certain amount of support they get that's at a level that's consistent. I find that, and this is across Koreas, I find that insane within teaching itself, we talk about the importance of pushing up pay. I still think that's really important. I also think that it's how things are delivered. So when the government say, for example, OK, do you know what? It's not restorative but we're going to give you nought .5% above inflation, which to me would be similar to saying 4 weeks full pay and then two weeks 90% and then the rest of that actually is going to be 8 weeks full pay now, which someone wiped out as like 900 to £1500 a month a year more, right?

14:59 It's not huge. No, it's small. So if that equivalent happened with pay, I would be the first one to come out and say as well, yeah, it's great, just like I did with maternity pay. But I'm not saying this is bad news. Obviously it's good news to give people more money, but this has to be the goal we have to be pushing. Yeah. It's not good enough. It's not good enough. This is still no, we're near authority of like, cool, thanks. Let's not pretend that you've just revolutionised. Exactly. I don't think my, I think my reactions pretty much the same in terms of if that happened with pay, I'd be like, yeah, OK, that's great. But it is kind of a minimum we expect here. And if you go back to maternity pay, I think even if the I'm going to come out and said, you know what, 26 weeks is completely unrealistic. Like I said before, restorative pay, we can't push to that. Even if they come out and say, but you know what, 3 months for full pay, you know, with trip, they can come and say what they want.

15:44 We've doubled it, we've tripled it. We've done all this whatever, three months full pay with a plan to increase as time goes on, right? That to me would be more acceptable, but I would still be, I still think you should always be pushing and pushing and pushing. And I think where you think something should be and where it is now is not always going to be the same. But I think you can definitely judge the past and the way something's presented. Because what I saw with maternity pay, it was presented as we're doubling it and we're going to help recruitment now because mums, young mums, are the first people leaving the profession. So that's just false. I don't think going for four weeks full pay to 8 weeks full pay maternity will mean anyone stays in teaching when they return. More sure.

16:24 Like, are we having a laugh? Are we joking? And I think there is a huge injustice when you compare it to what the state are giving other people in public, public roles. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. With pay. Look, I, I think, I think it's different because if I look at what the junior doctors are getting huge pay rises, like they are actually in like the 20s percent heading towards restoration much more quickly. Great on them. I'm actually, I'm not using that as my bar, as T. We should also be getting the 25%. I was like, OK, you know, you've got to prioritise as a government, you've got to understand, actually to me, me, me personally as a teacher, I feel like that's a more pressing issue for the doctors who've gone through medical school and done 678 years in university to become doctors, People who look after our most vulnerable people in the world and sickness and like, it's a, it's a high skilled job, high skilled, considerably more debt, considerably more debt and there are more money. Everything scales up and I'm like, you know what? I, I, that's fine to me.

17:18 I'm not going to use that to equate to teaching. So whereas with maternity pay, it's, it is already scaled to your, to your amount that you're earning. And I, I just think that when we're talking about raising children as the next generation, it should just be like a level playing field there in terms of what you're getting paid. Definitely. Or at least considerably closer. That's the first step. Because it is wildly, wildly different, isn't. It and that's my issue. I think that's that's what I'm saying there is like. Come on the the the idea that is is true, isn't it? It feels like a very like a remnant of just the past as in terms of the way the system works now doesn't really make sense for our values now. And the idea that one family will have a year of maternity and another family will have 4 weeks of maternity and they both just work in the grand scheme, relatively normal jobs, right? It's just, it is actually objectively crazy, isn't it? I mean, they're both just, they both just need help. They're both just raising the next generation of children to run our society that we'll live in and be retired. And by the way, one day we're going to need these people looking after us like.

18:16 It doesn't, it doesn't. That doesn't cut with me when they say like, how many, you know, teaching as a female dominating profession and, and lots of them are in that age bracket where they're going to have kids. So yeah. So this is about a mother being at home with their child without having to worry about the bank balance because we live in a society now where there's two income families. Yeah. So no matter what your family dynamic is, however it works, you need 2 incomes to to sustain a family a lot of the time to sustain a household. So it is a huge hit now it's it's not the same as the 90s. Yeah, when maybe one person was part time or maybe one person earned significantly less. Quite often in the situation of being the woman and the mum, maternity pay, it wasn't as much of a hit.

19:02 Now it's equal pay. I've, I've Lauren learned more than me for a lot of her career. So when one person's is at home now and misses out on income for that length time, whoever they are, that is a huge hit on the household income. And the household income is what you base your life off. That's what I base my mortgage off. That's what I base my outgoings off. And then when it comes to choosing to have a child, there is a massive, massive difference to sitting down and going well, one of us is only going to get 4 weeks full pay and we're going to have to sacrifice a lot of money for the whole year or all good. We're going to have a whole year full pay between us. We're all dandy. It's, it's, it's ridiculous. Like it's such a huge impact.

19:42 And to me, it's so much different to a bit of a boost in your pay just in general as your pay packet. Sure, Although that's important. This to me, like when I talked about scales earlier, this is much more important to me and I think society as a whole. And I think when you compare it, it's it's. That is non that is outrageous in my opinion. Yeah, yeah, definitely no. OK went off on a bit of a tangent there, but jumping back into the kind of pointless episode which was about that, you know, I can't go off tangent. I don't know what's going on a little what the tangent is talking absolute nonsense. Yes, could be. So I want to dive into some stats right related to. With it to what we were originally talking about, about the idea of schools being on the brink of collapse and the challenges we've had towards that. So 2010 that whole that whole decade basically the 20 tens was. Terrible World Cup in 2010.

20:27 Which is what kicked. Away home fans booing, yeah, yeah, we drew against Algeria wasn't. It China fantastic as a huge fan so. Rob Green's fumble bit our first game against USA. Won one draw. We were. Pat Rob Green. Sorry, I'd just get myself back to. 20 yeah, no, I was Rob Green. He'd he'd really annoyed me as well. So yeah. So that that whole decade, right. So here's the stats. I was looking, I went down a bit of rabbit hole here because it is quite interesting. So there's a stat of literally just how much a school spends per pupil. Is is one of many stats, as you can imagine, that we track various things on in schools and it was an interesting one. So the school spending per pupil across that decade dropped by 9% in real terms. Oh my God. So that's from the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

21:08 That was a 2021 study austerity baby just after, right, which we all know like that was quite obviously happening during that time. But when you hear it, it's like. This is what I meant earlier when I said about breaking point. So if you said that in 2010 that that would happen, you'd be like, what? Yeah, that'll take us to breaking points. Absolutely. And it's like, that's a, in my opinion, a fair thing to say. You're defining breaking point not as the school literally shutting down. Yeah, yeah, you're defining breaking point as below an acceptable level, like so the the whole, sorry, I know I'm cutting across what you're saying. I want to really clarify what breaking point here. The issue comes with how people are defining breaking point. Because if you define breaking point as the school can't function anymore and it's literally closed, then it's going to take out a lot more. We'd have to half the bud, do you know what I mean? We'd have a skeleton school in place, OK, We can we can kind of care for children and do our best, right? But we're defining breaking point as like, is that acceptable now in this society that we just think just a 10% flat cut on what we're spending on kids clearly to me is breaking point.

22:06 But when you Fast forward to 2020 and you're like, whoa, we're still here, guys. It's like, yeah, OK. Is that the bar? Is the bar existence of a school that's fun like? What we're saying, yeah, it's frustrating, I agree. And I think we can, I think we should regularly revisit this idea of what breaking point is, by the way. Because I, I also felt like as I was reading more and more that breaking point is when stuff breaks in the current model, genuine. That sounds really stupid, because that's not obviously what it is. When we can't fulfil what we're currently fulfilling. Yeah, exactly that. OK, this system is broke. We created a new system, right, that had a lower bar. Exactly that. Yeah, because we can always do more for kids. We never got to the top and thought, Oh my God, we're doing everything we possibly could do now. The only way is down. That's not true. And. We could always do less for kids. Exactly. And that's what happened Exactly.

22:46 So that's what breaking point was to me. It was like, oh, we've got to this lovely equilibrium right now of like we're of all the things we're providing fighting for children through various ways. And what's happened over that decade is we lost loads of that. We lost 9% to be exact. The the people spending whatever that was on. We can go through if we want to, but I'm so I can imagine the things we spend, you know, money on kids. Think of the support, you know, if a speech and language therapist didn't came in once every six months and now instead of once every month beforehand, right. Is it breaking point? Like, OK, maybe someone could argue with me it's not breaking point, but I could definitely say back to you, it's it's objectively crap. Yeah, because it's objectively worse and awful. And I could say for a child, it is their breaking point. They're not getting the speech and language there. Exactly.

23:27 Anymore, the only way you could possibly argue against that is to suggest that when they were coming in once a month, five of those six months they were doing nothing. Yeah, that's the only way you could say it was a worthy cut. Yeah. Because if they were doing stuff in those six months that was actually helping a child, then by going from six months to one month, you are objectively, it's worse. You're not doing. Child would have got something and now they're not. It is as simple as that. So. Yeah, and that child even needed it or didn't, Right? Right. And if we're thinking it's not breaking point and acceptable, we're saying all of the things we've cut were superfluous. We didn't need, didn't need them, and it's like luxuries. It's like, okay, someone would still say, well, we didn't need them because it's okay. Now it's like, Oh my God, what do we mean by need? Okay, let's just, it just goes into this semantics.

24:08 It winds me up and we can, we can change the whole thing we want. And it turns into the standard of what the children get gets lower. Yeah, and and you can't argue you. Just have to say, okay, I'm happy with that. Yeah, I think some people were like, genuinely right, really. I honestly got like looking at the graph is really interesting because it showed spending before that as well. It did, as we know from the 90s with Labour as well and Blair, the spending rapidly went up. Yeah, rapidly went up. Like the provision children were getting? Yeah. Increased significance they put their money with their put their money with they spent a lot of money on kids right, but I felt that as well when I was in school and it's ridiculous to think that I could be 567 and feeling that. But if I just look back, we had everything we needed and you know what sometimes we had more than we needed right if we're just going off need and that's a what a sign of a Great Society. I know that a boy from a council flat of a single mom could go into school and grow a Caterpillar and have a Caterpillar as a pet and also a brand new computer got put in there honest and like and have playground equipment they could play with that he didn't have at home. It's like, well, we don't need that. It's like, no, we don't need that, do we but say, can we just give it to our kids for the next year? Well, we don't need it.

25:15 We don't need anything. Kids they are. Kids. Oh my God, what is wrong with people? They are our kids. We're supposed to do better for our next generation. We're not supposed to say, well, I didn't have it. That feels like that. I. Didn't have UFO boxy ball on my playground, turned out just fine. You didn't turn out fine, did you? Clearly. Didn't need it. Didn't have it. Don't want it. Leave it at you, son. All right. What? What? Changed in the psyche of some people to think that an improvement for the next generation was something to be. Jealous of? I know, yeah. What you what you I I personally would love for my son to do 10 times more and achieve 10 times more than what's crazy. In the current state of things, your son will not get as as good provision as you did.

25:59 No, he won't because we lived through that, that golden era of lots of funding in schools and it's just basically been decimated since then. Our kids will not get a good ride as what we got. In terms of simply, I'm not not judging teachers. I'm not judging. I'm literally just saying in terms of how much money gets put into the system, money obviously translates to services and resources. They're not going to get as good a deal. Simple as that. That's crazy. And that makes me 30 years. That's not good. No. And some people go taxpayers saved on that. I don't have kids. Why should I be paying for it? Because you're a member of society and you were a kid. Yeah, everyone was a kid. Whether you want your own children or not, there is just a duty of care to the next generation to at least provide them with what you got.

26:42 And if you end up having to provide the next generation with less than what you received, you have failed as a generation. Genuinely, we are failing our next generation because how on earth can we hold our head up and say that aren't we found? No, the planet's dying. There's nothing in terms of services anymore. You can't get a doctor's appointment. Schools have been decimated in terms of their funding. What have we improved with latching on to big tech to say, oh, well, that's improved because we can get information at our fingertips now? Yeah. Is that the only win? Is it doom scrolling algorithms that infest your brain? Nice one. What a great thing to pass on to the kids. Dylan, don't forget you don't have to read anymore because because AI will do it for you. That's your mate, that's your actual opinion, right?

27:24 You can get a summary for five. Minutes I mean that's true. I do quite like that No, no, I didn't want to do that I want to go to the next level of AI. I don't have to think at all. Do it for me, no. But I agree, it's crazy. It's like. What happened? Almost. What happened honestly, did, did something happen or did people just say, you know, this is like you, this is interesting. Just a side note again of austerity and cuts where there's some people who didn't want to do what they did, but thought we just got to do that. Probably. Of course, like from what I've heard, you know, I listen to a lot of podcasts, a lot of information, a lot of politics chat and a lot of people who were literally in power over those years and a bunch of them say, oh, we just had to do it. It doesn't wash with me personally because there is always more.

28:05 There's there's always another option. And I think you've only got to look internationally to see what other roads people check because it was a global financial crisis at the end of the day. So, you know, there are a lot of countries who are in a mess and went about it in different ways. I personally just think that there are certain things in a society that are sacrosanct and if you're going to take them cuts for that generation, it's it's terrible. But if you think as a country, we have to do that, there has to be a plan for restoration 100% for for. And I'm not talking about restoration. We're paying now. I'm talking about restoration just for the basic services you're providing the next generation of your country. Like we talk about patriotism so much currently and it feels like to me, patriotism has just been rebranded as I'm the most important thing and people who are like me are most important thing and I've got a flag up.

28:50 Patriotism to me would be having a country that is actually thinking I'm going to idolise the next generation and give them everything I possibly can. And I'm going to work and I'm going to graft and I'm going to make sure the people who come after me get more than what I got. And as a country we develop and grow and we improve. Not it's selfish patriotism at the minute. It winds me up because I I feel I grow up quite patriotic and patriotism at the minute seems to be selfish and me centred and I want this and I want that and the group of people I associate with need to be better off because we're the ones who are the worst off at the minute. Jesus Christ. If we're thinking about patriotism, I could think of 17 things that should be improved if I want to live in a better country and it doesn't involve getting red paint and going to a roundabout. It involves funding things that actually make it work in this country.

29:38 And I understand when people see the news and go to their local doctors and they can't get an appointment or go to the Tesco and their food shops twice as much now and then look at their bill and their taxes gone up and they think what is happening here? Like how on earth is this a thing that I live in my country? This is awful. The reaction to that should be let's improve it. But the reaction seems to be and it's because of them. And it's it's, it's nothing to do with them. That is not the reason why these 14 things are falling apart. I can assure you that you and you can you can immigration. It's getting really political now. You can tell we I'm planning this immigration, right is a very important discussion, which is completely valid.

30:23 And I don't like how it's gone down the road of if you think this, you're automatically that if you think this, you're racist. If you think that, you're a beta lefty, right? Nonsense. Even if if you talk about this, you're wrong. Yeah, exactly that. Exactly. No, no, no, it's really important and it's completely valid to have certain concerns about the sheer number of people. I I think that's a valid concern, right? Sure. In terms of if you just look historically and you think about the infrastructure that we have as well, it's, it's OK to question these things. And when someone demonises you straight away, I really don't like that. Even if I don't necessarily agree with your point of view of some people saying no one should be coming in at all, right? My personal views are relevant here. I think it would be healthy to have a debate and I think that's being stifled by a lot of people right now.

31:07 But after that, the only thing that you should be talking about is how can we improve? How can we get better? How can we help each other? That's all I personally think is important. And all I see is the vision at the lowest possible level. And who's laughing? The owner of the newspaper who's been stocking it. Who's laughing? The CEO of Tesco, who've doubled their prices, who get more, you know, profit than ever before. Mark Zuckerberg, head of Meadow, who's getting more eyes on the screen. They're the ones laughing. They're the ones who are benefiting from this. And we're here fighting each other about it. And we're just as bad. I say we as like, I'm on a side, like if it was to pick a side, I'd be on the side of I'm, I'm very wary of people who demonise immigration.

31:54 I think that's a horrible road to go down. And I personally don't like it. And I, I, I champion immigration. I think it's a good thing. But I also, when someone says loads of people are coming in, how on earth we're affording this, it's costing the taxpayer a lot of money. It's a legitimate concern. Yeah, it's legitimate. Just like it's legitimate when you say, oh, my doctors, it's not getting the adequate funding from the top down now and it's had another 100 people want to join. I'm going to get worse healthcare now. Legitimate. But what do you do after that? Do you just scapegoat and point at the low level or do you think, wait a minute, why is this doctors not had more of an infrastructure boost in the last 10 years? Why are we not building more infrastructure in this country as a?

32:36 Whole why is that school falling down for the last 15 years and we've not done anything about? It's not because someone joined from Turkey. That's not the thing that's making that school break. We just had a whole discussion about how 9% per kid got caught. Yeah, there, that's a big problem. Like I don't want to diminish other problems because I think people can have their opinions and stuff and I think you can have really good discussions with lots of people when it bears into just blatant racism. They can just get in the bin. I've got nothing. I don't want anything to do with them. But when you demonise people for just having opinions that are just completely valid, then I get annoyed because all that happens then is you shut a conversation down and you pit people against each other and nothing happens. And the only voices that get through are extremist ones exactly is either I've got this most black and white thing and and it's just this one thing. My one thing is the correct way.

33:22 Everything else is wrong. And then the polar opposites of that. And that's it. That's all you hear. That's yeah, that's basically where we're at, isn't? It I, I remember once, I'll tell our story quickly because it was the classic thing of to, to me, this, this seemed like a pure discrimination where I had a child in my class who joined, didn't speak any English. Obviously it came from a different came from a different country. And so he had his own place, had his own tray. Lovely boy. He just cracked on with some of the stuff that we sorted out for him. And over the years he learned the language and he integrated just fine. It was, it was not a problem. And a parent said, Oh, can I, can my child not sit next to him, please?

34:02 And it was framed as because obviously he doesn't speak the language and then she can't talk and yada, yada, yada, right. However, there was just an undercurrent of don't want him, don't don't want to sat next to him. And it was, it was awkward as professional because obviously you can't turn around and say, oh, it's because of that, because I turn into the person I'm moaning about. I'm almost assuming something but that. But you know, when you talk to someone and you just know that there's an undercurrent here of not him just sitting next to someone else. And it's like, you know, as the teacher, I made the decision for that person to sit there either for support for him or so that I'm close to him maybe supporting her as well. And me, me changing that would mean actually, although you might think it's better, the provision for your daughter might actually get worse because I made this decision on the whole, as I'm going to, it's because I can help. Help.

34:51 This is an optimal situation. And even if it does benefit your daughter, it's going to detriment someone else. And didn't seem to care about that. And that's fine. That's down to him. My my point here is just simply, I've gone off for one. I'm very sorry. I apologise. My point in general is there's a lot of problems. Division doesn't help even between people if you're just assuming the worst of them straight away. And in that example, my brain went to assuming the worst and absolutely might not have been. Yeah, could have been, might have been, might not have been. Can I then accuse that person of being racist when there's a chance they just weren't and there's no actual evidence? Not really. No. Of course you can't, not really. Like I, I can't. And that'd be wrong for me to do that. Even if there's a 10% chance they were being, it's still I, I can't just assume that and say that. And I wouldn't want to ever 'cause that rift because then I've just caused the rift out of nothing. And it's more division and it's more people against each other who actually aren't really, I don't think fundamentally addressing the issues.

35:47 And it all stems back down to the same thing you've been saying there of it's this came from there was a 10% or 9% cut in the provision for children over 10 years. Nothing else really beats that in terms of what I think. Oh, God, yeah. That probably impacted it massively. Oh, yeah. But it could have been that. Yeah, probably was that, though. Probably was the 9% cut, wasn't it, across the board. Yeah, that's probably the biggest problem. That I reckon that's the reason my TA got fired, to be honest with you. Yeah, my I reckon that was the reason we had to make cuts and we lost TA. That's the most common one, by the way, just looking online. If you enjoy this episode, by the way, please do follow. I'm the host today, so please do follow. Send us a message, join our WhatsApp community, do all that good stuff. We know a lot of you listen and still don't leave a review, so it'd be great if you do.

36:28 If you're enjoying Dylan's rants, which is kind of what I was hoping to get from this, to be honest with you, I was thinking. This is not scripted. Like we can tell and. I, I, I do, I do get nervous after, but not nervous, but I'm like, God, I hope I get my point across because yeah. And I. Think so. I think your points to be really clear, I think even if we have gone off tangent, it doesn't matter. It's it's interesting discussion. I think it's good to get into people's brain. That's the point of this podcast really. But I guess sort of bringing it back round. Yeah, what was I saying? So, so a lot of the a lot of the cuts, the big proportion of cuts have been stuffed. Support stuff makes sense, obviously, like support support staff. I looked at quite a few different things when I was looking at this like articles and research papers and things and a lot of them and quotes from head teachers and things from over the years like Schools Week articles almost always were saying the first thing that we had to do was look for little cuts, like little resource things we could do.

37:21 When the cuts kept coming, kept coming, kept coming. It was support staff, support staff, support staff until we get to an absolute skeleton crew and some some head teachers this year in a school to Castle that came out literally 2 days ago were saying there is genuinely now nothing left the cut. They were like this is the one so this is what I'm scheduled. I was like is it 1? For eight years ago, you. Said that last year and the year but they were like we have got nothing left to cut. Like we are absolutely like bare bones skeleton crew now for this school. Yeah. And I don't know even if even if it's exaggeration, I think like you said at the beginning, it's a very, very important message to get across there. One thing I noticed just from, you know, throughout your career in general, you, you know, as you get older as well and you become, you become more senior in your school, you, you do tend to as well become a bit close with the people actually running the school and get to know the maybe behind the scenes a bit more. And I noticed a shift in front of my career. And it'd be really interesting to get these numbers. I don't know if they're out there or anyone knows them of the percentage of your budget that goes on staff, right? Because because like my gut instinct is, is saying that you in order to maintain a percentage, it's probably much higher than a lot of people think. That's the first thing I'd say.

38:33 But I don't know these numbers, but it's probably higher than most people think in terms of the amount of total amount of money you spend, how much goes on staff. But when you're constantly cutting that, it seems like it's a battle to keep that number as low as possible, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It seems like it's a battle to think, well, we can't let staffing get to 95%. That's just outrageous because then it literally would go to breaking points. You wouldn't be able to afford books. You need X percent to actually get actually get, you know, just to be able to provide the children. To be above the thing where the school does close. Right, exactly that there's got to be a line. Exactly. So the the issue I think we're probably getting to is that percentage is getting higher and higher and higher in terms of we're not getting enough money and and teachers and what support staff aren't getting the pay they deserve.

39:14 That's a whole nother thing. But in general, staffing, it gets more expensive on the budget, which means it's a higher percentage, which means you either have to cut your staff. So if you've been doing that over the years and you should try and balance it now you have no more staff to cut before you literally go before under ratio. You have to look at the remaining whatever 20%, I don't know the numbers, again, whatever percentage it is. And then kids stop getting books, but kids stop getting pens. And it's like, OK, going back to discussion earlier about what breaking point is. Maybe it was exaggerating to say breaking point, but what they meant was very clear. There will be a point where even the most exaggerated version of breaking point does become reality. Yeah, I agree. Because it's like, I, I think of these examples in my head of like, do you know what? The school had 10 TAS and then they had to cut to 8 and they were like, this is breaking point. We had 10 and 10 is what we need to function where we are. And they cut to 8 next year, they cut to six and they cut to five.

40:04 Then they cut to four. Eventually they will get to a point where they've been saying, oh, breaking point every year because it is kind of breaking their system. There will be a point where it literally is breaking point because it's like you can't actually the the school doesn't run without this minimum, minimum percentage in these different areas. So it'd be interesting. So for the listeners and and viewers just thinking, if you don't know the stat right now, it'd be, it'd be just have a think. What do? What sort of percentage of the school budget? On average, obviously it fluctuates massively per school. Do you think gets spent on just staffing costs And it's around and I didn't write it down, but I did read it earlier, Funny enough on a, on an article it was, it was around just over 80%. I was, I wish I said yeah, because in my head it was 80. Percent, you said the 20% remaining which? Yeah. OK. Yeah, I was. I was thinking. It was 82. The one I read earlier in the schools week article was 82% of this particular school. So you know, it it like I said, it will. Flow what I've heard from schools, it is between 75 and 85%.

40:53 Like like I don't think of the numbers. I've literally been. Told our school was on the higher end of that. I think our school was in the high 80s at one, yeah, mid 80s. It was crazy because our school had, they just had high, high staff costs, genuinely like that was just part of the strategy, I guess. But it was, it was expensive. And I remember him telling our head teacher at the time telling us that. And I was like, what? Yeah, that's because I just expected it to be like 50%. I was like, yeah, of course there's so much more to a school and it costs loads of money. And they were like, no, no, like most of our budget just goes on literally paying you guys. Yeah, I was like, wow, yeah, I really, really didn't know that. So. Yeah, that's pretty interesting. And when you think about the government's push in the next few years, again, it's just more and more lip service where they say things like, and, and we need more enrichment for the kids. And, and we need to make sure with the SEND white paper, we're going to have all these ISPs done and we're going to have all this support in place. Are we, are we, Like, do you think that training and and saying the right thing is what we're missing? Like do you think that's going to salt? Do you honestly think £200 million for training in SEND is going to suddenly transform inclusion and what we can do for our kids?

41:55 Of course. What a ridiculous thing to say. It's like I'm trying to think of a different career. It's like training, training up someone in a in a trade. They're a plumber, right? And they don't have pipes, right. And they're going, Joe, we'll give you some more training on how to how to actually, those pipes are quite tricky to integrate in this system and they're actually not designed for that system. That system will never work for them, but we're going to try and make it work anyway. We'll give you more training to get those pipes in that system. Yeah. Can I have the pipes please? Can I have the equipment and the actual funding and the money to do that and the time to implement it? No, but I'll send you a pre recorded video of how to do it. Don't matter. It does not matter because I can't do.

42:35 It I'm going to give you £1.50. Thank you. I I did mean more than that though. I get that. I get that money. The the word money sounds good and an amount is cool, but there is a certain amount that makes a difference though and that's not it. Exactly. Right. Here's interesting. I'm going to flip it a little bit then, right. So in the 20 twenties up until the last five years basically. 6. It's like 6 years. All right, whatever, whatever. Dylan. School spending per pupil has increased. So the graph very much looks like this, right? It went up in the 90s, like rapid 2000s. All the spending 2010's decimated comes down in a horrible curve, right? And it has curved up again in the last 5-6 years. Yeah, post COVID, they did inject cash, right? And this the, the, so the Institute for, for Fiscal Studies in the 2026 version of the 2021 version I was quoting earlier basically showed that it was pretty much back to 20, 2010, 2010 levels in terms of how much we, we schools spend on pupils.

43:31 Yeah. So per pupil, per pupil. OK. So do you think that's, do you think it's fair to say from that stat alone that we've kind of we've the damage is undone, we've reversed it because if we are at 2010 levels in terms of how much we spend on PRP, have we reversed? It no, clearly not. Obviously not, because no matter, OK, people will say that's restoration where you're at, OK, And even with pay, even with pay, we've got restorative pay. But cool, I'm back there. I did teach for 10 years at a lower rate like I did. I did literally miss out on 10s of thousands of pounds because of the squeeze, right? And it's the same for the school system. It's the same for the leaky roof. It's the same for the crumbling classroom. It's the same for the the child who's now 12, right?

44:14 OK, spending's now where it should have been. They've still missed out on all of that. All that because we're spending the same per pupil that we did in 2010 in real terms now. So ignore the fact that all of the cuts happened alongside this is, this is what I found really interesting because this graph very much LED you down the way of thinking, oh, it's been, it's been restored. Like we're, it's OK now we're done. But it's like no, no, no, no, no, no, because in 2010 when we were spending, let's say it was 9000. And this is real term. This is real term so like the numbers are a bit we. Can ignore inflation exactly it's the same it's. Real term. So it accounts for inflation. OK, yeah. So let's just say we were spending. I think it was something like 8000 something. So let's just, I'm just going to round it, right. Let's just say we were spending £9000 per pupil in 2010.

44:54 We also had 15 Tasmania and teachers were on X amount of money compared to, you know, the economy, like they were earning a certain amount in the economy. Cut to now it you can still say, oh wow, look, we're spending £9000 real terms on pupils again, but we have two Tasmania and teachers are only significantly less. So I, I thought it was a really bad metric to actually compare the state of education because I was like, yeah, you can say we're spending an expat on pupils. Yeah. While still declining in loads of different areas. So where's that money going? What money? Well, you well like so we're schools are spending on average 9 K in in 2010. Yeah. And there are more Tasmania and more teachers and now they're spending nine K per thing and there are fewer teachers and it's all real time so it's equivalent.

45:36 Yeah, sure. So there's there's. Surely that means the spare cash that. That was my question. This is where this is where my rabbit hole, right? Yeah, I went down. So I was looking this, I was looking this up even more and I ended up just reading a bunch of articles on this again. So useful things like schools week, by the way, and any new articles and stuff. And in general, because they really do just get the information, put it there on an article, and then you can just read. Because just very quickly for clarification of anyone wondering what's going on. So we're really clear the dip we were talking about in between 2010 and now, that amount of money that just got missing and wasn't spent is still missing and scores are therefore behind because of that, right? So this what we're saying now is a separate point that if literally this second we're spending nine K real terms on a child and in 2010 we were spending nine K real terms on a child, but now there's less staff that that by definition means that less of that nine K now is being spent on staff.

46:24 So compared to 2010, where's the extra? Cut doesn't make sense, does it? There's a hole there, which is exactly what I was thinking. So I was reading a Schools Week article, right? I'll keep quoting them. And it was basically referencing this graph from the Institute for Fiscal Studies that we're just talking about the shows, oh, this lovely restorative curve. And it was basically saying the problem is those figures are based on inflation. I said how? I said it's real terms that the real terms, this is based on inflation for the economy, right, rather than actual costs faced by schools and actual costs faced by schools is not in line with the way the economy has. Moved right. Right. Things like. So. So the real time just calculated on something separate to. It's stupid, right? Doesn't make sense and and this article went went, went through and was like actually in reality, if you take into account the actual like rising cost of staff, unfunded National Insurance, energy prices, food pensions, SEND costs, we know how much SEND.

47:15 Has changed, that's why all of this. Stuff, all of this stuff, when you actually take into account that which is kind of kind of exclusive to the ecosystem of a school, not the economy, yes, it's not remotely, remotely restored. That's not already. Restored isn't we're nowhere near back to 2010 terms. Yeah, because if we were back to 2010 terms just to complete this whole loop, it would feel like 2010, right? That's the point. It doesn't. Yes, so that that is exactly my point now where we say this and this is where people outside of the school system, maybe even in the government in education terms, right, Or they run a newspaper or or you know, and then the NEU come out and say, oh, this is ridiculous. It's not the same. Teachers just say I literally talk both. It's not the same. The provision is literally less. They can all look at this graph and go, what do you mean they spend exactly this and my graph same, same, same, separate to the separate to the little dip we talked about.

48:01 They can literally say we're spending the same now as 2010. But what we're actually saying is that is obviously bollocks. Yeah, and and and it's not just a feeling someone's actually dived into how these things calculated and it it doesn't. And this is where stats are so. Are so useful, but also, Oh my goodness me how they can be manipulated exactly. So when I really wrap my head around it, I was like, this makes sense because it can't be. It can be true that in real terms, in terms of the economy, we are now spending about the same amount, the same amount per people in a school as we were in 2010. But the way that money is distributed through schools is very, very different now because things cost different amounts proportionately to when it's in 2010. So it costs more.

48:43 More of that money goes to fewer staff now. More of that money goes to bills than it did. Yeah, proportionally, yeah. In 2010, I was just going to say like if you think about energy and I'm going off my Dome here and and people correct me not, but I'm just going to use this as an example. I'm not saying this is definitely true, but for example, the energy cost in 2010 and the energy cost now could far outstrip what the baseline generic inflation real terms for the economy would be. Let's say the economy is just jumped 10%. Let's just say for example, you're going to sake energy but or specific things to a school that aren't economy wide, but specifically for example, maybe you're thinking about like energy costs or paper costs. We saw after COVID these things could have far outstripped the general real times rise.

49:23 Which means that although in real times it's the same amount of money going in because you're spending on specific things that cost a lot more than the real times increase. It can look like it's the same, but it's obviously not. Exactly that, exactly that. So last point I want to mention on this whole thing, I just I feel like I have to, I can't not talk about a CNDA little bit because from what I've read, it is one of the biggest alongside sort of staff. It increases and and things like energy bills, right? The whole push towards inclusivity in schools, which I'm not saying is about I'm not even having an opinion really on this right now. The objective thing is it is just costing schools more in terms of SEND provision and councils, right? And councils. Exactly right. So something I mentioned earlier, I'm going to actually quote properly now, which was a head teacher called David Rogers.

50:06 He was on it again in a different schools. We got you can tell I went through a lot of schools and stuff. Sponsored by schools. I know, I know. Right, but they are genuinely no affiliation, but they're no affiliation, not sponsored. And I happily always call them out for good stuff because they genuinely release great reports on articles. So this head teacher in in the in the article literally quoted, we've finally reached the stage where there's nothing left to cut and we're now in a budget deficit. So the first time that school actually got to a budget deficit, he was like, we keep making cuts to make sure we're not in a deficit and now there's just nothing left to cut and we just have to go into it was like we don't even know what to do anymore. There's nothing left. And, and his school was, he was, you know, he was really, really proud to be extremely inclusive. Like that was a driving force for him as a person. And his school is of course, and that's like the essence of community.

50:47 Of course, we're inclusive for the people that live here. We're a school. You live down the road, you come to this school. Exactly right. And so a couple of things, you know, to just to sort of point to as well in terms of this conversation. It is usually varied depending on the community or any. This report was showing that some schools have like tiny proportions of of peoples of SEND in their school and other schools have huge proportions, right. And his overall point was even though it is supposed to be proportionate because it's attached with funding, with EHCPS, for example, it comes with funding. Yeah, well, not everyone gets EHCP. Not everyone gets EHCP. That's absolutely right. And that's part of the reason. And also the EHCP, it's not a perfect system. Now, obviously going to be some children who don't have the exact perfect amount of funding for what they are. Some children get less and this is more and. The schools still have to fund a certain amount before they get anything.

51:31 There's a lot, there's a lot of qualifying factors for them that cost money, right? And and this data showed that even though we have these systems in place to hopefully support schools with higher SEND need, it doesn't actually work out. And it was saying that the, the basically the more SEND in a school, the more likely it is that school goes into sort of budget deficit and they can't actually. Afford it? Yeah, that makes. Sense it just it just makes sense even though the system then the government will say no, but no, because we it's all fully funded, it's all funded Ahps OK, it is funded and there is a good nod towards that and it does make a significant impact genuinely. It makes you go into a deficit less. I'm just a bit into a definition. Yeah, right, exactly right. That's basically it. So that I just thought that was really interesting.

52:11 Yeah. So think about the new, the new Sen changes. It was obviously quite the white paper that came out recently. Yeah. The overall point here that made me think and I want you to talk about it a bit more is that the the changes have to come with funding, adequate funding because it's already it's already not quite working. And if we're going to move more towards. OK, look what will reduce that pressure by having fewer EHCP. That's not the yeah, that's not the thing, that's one. That's not the thing that's rising most goal this. Is the narrative, yeah, for fewer EHCP because we can see there's a bit of a struggle there and competition there and even schools sometimes struggling to fund it as well. Oh, my God. And we're just going to have ISPs with no funding instead, with no, no funding unless it's almost complex case. And we know it's going to be a little bit more or a little bit more grit from the teachers to change, but it is going to be better. Yeah.

52:57 What do you think about that? It's just, it's just not like I think what's being forgotten. We've said a lot about this in general and I even mentioned a little bit about this, but the thing that's been forgotten, I think, is that how it currently is right now is not working. How it currently is right now is, is broken, right? And I think inclusion is fantastic and something we should strive for. And you and I can probably both think of literally 10s of children in just the last few years who have SEND, who have needs that have to be met. And a lot of them can, it could be small adjustments that means they thrive in the classroom. They literally thrive in the classroom. And I can think of loads of kids as really benefited from little things we can do. And that's where training can come in and be really genuinely helpful when someone come across and say, do you know what, actually, if you're seeing this, you can just do that. It's a small little tweak.

53:47 And it means the world for this kid who can now stay with their friends in, in, in the in the classroom they've always been in, rather than maybe seeing a a complex need of thinking you need to not be in mainstream. Yeah. So coming at it from that angle, I understand the push for inclusivity, right? But it is ideologically driven to say that the aim for everyone should be mainstream. Because I can also think of a lot of children who absolutely needed to be in a different setting and mainstream scope was not for them. And it wasn't because of a lack of training. Maybe potentially it was because of a lack of funding. And with actual time and money, maybe we could have made changes to mainstream to allow more children for that to be the setting for them, right? But it seems like what's actually going to happen is the time and the funding won't be adequate, but the expectation will be that we're getting children into mainstream who need that time and funding to make it suitable for them.

54:38 It won't make mainstream suitable for them, but they'll be shoehorned into this system that doesn't work for. Them exactly that all all of the training for staff and ISPs in the world is not going to change the fact that that child simply needs something that is attached to money. Genuinely, they need it and without it there's other things are great, but you just simply can't achieve that. Yeah, this very quickly. Sorry. This is where it's frustrating when you feel like you say something and the reaction can be, well, don't you want training? Isn't training good? Come on, we're putting 4 billion in. Should we? Someone commented on the railway. They said should we just do nothing? Then I was like, do you think, I think that do you think I think that we should just do nothing then and and and then something means you can't suggest that it's not going to work for some reason.

55:20 I think there's a huge culture sometimes in education and this goes across, whether it's government down or literally in schools, which is we have this ideologically driven force that we want to go for and it sounds great. And on paper it's fantastic. The literal people and teachers and educators in the classroom say, don't think that'll work. And they're brushed aside as like, you don't understand it was going to work. Of course, that'd be my own, not just. The teacher doing the job, What do you know? Right. And how often we've gone along with something and then been like 2 years down the line. Oh, do you know what We were right. So when people in the profession are saying that this current plan will not work because of XYZ, right, the likelihood is that they're probably correct. Yeah, definitely. And and all the training in the world and a little bit of money that we got, which is obviously 4 billion sounds like a lot. But in the grand scheme of things, it's not going to scratch the surface to make mainstream really suitable for children.

56:13 And there's there's two groups of children with complex SEND needs, right. Even in that complex bracket we've got now, some of them absolutely should be their mainstream school. And there are small things we can do and big things we can do. Small adjustments that allow them to to to be themselves and maybe regulate themselves in the classroom. Small things they're up to big things like A1 size fits all curriculum. The curriculum is not beneficial for them. Maybe they just do what they can do and actually still doing that in mainstream is good for them, right? Yep. Huge swathe of things we can do in mainstream to make it more inclusive for them, even with complex needs. Maybe a one to one TA even for some examples for health, health reasons. Loads we can do to make mainstream work for them. That comes with money and time needed. Not just training. Not just training has to come with money and time. Else it wouldn't be complex.

56:57 Yeah, it's it's only complex because it's tricky by definition. Yeah, like everyone else falls in the other brackets. So in the most complex needs, we need that real targeted quality funding if we want to have their own mainstream, which we should do because those children can be, there's another group in that complex who in that complex bracket who genuinely mainstream is not the setting for them. And as long as we continue to accept that that's the case, and we fund specialist provisions for them and settings for them that are more adept to their needs and have much smaller class sizes or whatever it might be to fit their needs, we can't pretend they can just go mainstream because of this. 100% it won't happen. It will break and children will get less exactly that. And we don't want that. One, we've seen it already. Like you said, I have seen with my own eyes in schools I have worked in children who have a bar of need that just simply cannot be met.

57:49 Even with genuine, even with loads of funding, in a mainstream setting you could give £1,000,000, right? And in that mainstream setting it it just would not be better than a specialist. Setting yeah, 100% it like that. That's what I'm saying. Could they cope? Maybe. Would it be best? No, they need that specialist setting. And and just think I just keep thinking about this article. You know, we've talked about that head teachers, there's a couple of head teachers in this article just talk about their scores and talk about inclusivity. And they were just saying that they're at the point there with, with some complex needs. It might be that it requires 3 staff members to hoist a pupil from one position to another. And you literally like, you can't do that without, without the staff members. He was like, I can't, I literally can't cut anymore. He was like, because the people, I, I wouldn't even be able to suit their needs.

58:34 They wouldn't be able to move around the school sites. They couldn't, they just simply couldn't be in this school anymore about these members of staff. And I'm at the point where I have to cut them or in a budget deficit. Yeah, this is mainstream. Oh my. Do you we are on the ground telling you that this is what weapons were not making this up and he wants inclusive. It's not like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He. Could quite easily go OK cool, let's let's get these people out of our school then. Yeah, I'd argue with that. That lands in the complex needs that still you can make work in a mainstream setting because it's about transport, but you have to fund. It with the money. It's it is different too. And I'm not saying, oh, you're in a complex need bracket, go to a special special needs school. No, no. I've taught loads of children with complex SEND who thrived in the classroom because we could make those adjustments. And I've seen unfortunately it's strip away and strip away and it is the most vulnerable kids who end up missing out. Yeah, exactly.

59:24 And it's saddening and we don't want that. Yeah, no, So it's, yeah, I have nothing more to say on that really. But I think there's a lot, there's a lot to consider. It's. Been a hefty episode it has scripted. On let's let's get your thoughts on it then. So firstly, let's do an over let's we do like a summary. Let's get you a summary thoughts on this you'll make you're. You're leading this. We're over an hour. Yeah, I'm just, I'm just thinking, you know, because we spoke a lot. So maybe then going right back to the original thing, if this whole point was, you know, we've been saying schools are going to collapse for the last 15 years and they're yet to collapse. Maybe it's not about schools collapsing imminently. Maybe it's. Maybe that's not our bar. Maybe it's about the definition of a well funded school that's changed from I think that's what it is, you know? We're saying we're at breaking point because this current system is well funded where it is right now. If we take it away, kids are going, some kids are going to lose out and we think that's breaking. Point.

1:00:09 The system will break and we'll need a new one, right? Exactly. And then that system will break and we'll need a new one. Exactly. Is it breaking point each time? Yeah, probably. Probably. We want to define it that way. If you don't like that, let's just say the provision for children is getting worse, Yeah. Someone online gave the good analogy that I'm sure you've heard many times in your life and most people will have done about the the frog in a boiling pot, boiling water, they're obviously going to scramble and jump out because it's boiling water. If you heat it up over time, it's not going to notice like a hot tub, hot tub, right? And that's how it feels like if you, if we, if we went from 2010 to 2020 in one year, it would have been breaking point. Honestly, schools would have just collapsed. They wouldn't have had to cope with the amount of change to happen because it was such a significant decline. Yeah, that frog in a water bowl, Yeah, that's slow only. 10 years and we sort of managed it.

1:00:52 So yeah, I think take it with a pinch of salt, the idea of we're at breaking point all the time, but also don't completely undermine what that actually means like because, because we are whether it's called breaking point or something else, your semantics. Yeah, it is a decline though. Your problems with the definition, not of what's actually happening. OK, cool, we'll get rid of that. And if you don't like the name breaking point or you don't like the word additional in the hours of each so you don't like the semantics of a thing, OK, I'll go scribble that back. This is what's happening. Are you OK with it? If the answer is yes, let's discuss why I think you're wrong and you think I'm wrong and have a discussion about it. If the answer's no, then you're letting the semantics of someone who maybe is in a different position of you who knows more get in the way of understanding what they're trying to say. You hear the leader of the NEU say schools are a breaking point, and your first thought is, well, I don't think they are, and you've never been in a school in your life.

1:01:38 Let me tell you that you're probably off the mark and what I said earlier is still true. I think the NEU should exaggerate and it should be part of their role, and therefore you should take sometimes the things the unions say with a pinch of salt. If they're doing their job properly, they will go to a more extreme angle. Fine, but let listen then and have a discussion and do your own research and talk to people on the ground. Find out more and join our WhatsApp community to discuss with us exactly what you think about this topic. Do you think we've exaggerated? Do you think I'm we? Exaggerate all the time. We exaggerate all the time. You don't grow social media follower without a bit of bait. Yeah, 100 percent, 100%. But it's a good topic and I, I want to talk about it more. Like you said at the beginning, I'm sure there's there'll be some perspectives or things or stats you don't necessarily aren't Privy to and.

1:02:23 I think there are. Maybe not, because it's done obviously, and someone might come into inside WhatsApp community and I start a discussion about that and it'll be fascinating. So if they say I'm wrong, I'll kick them. That's great. I'll let you in. Admin power. Yeah. Bye, Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. I'm just making an echo chamber. It's all gone to his head. This is why I had to do an episode today where he had no power. I wonder if people think this is like genuinely five times worse than normal or as good or better. Again, let us know. Maybe we'll do a poll. Let's do a poll. Was it alright dude? Did you? Never do this again you. Enjoy Dylan kind of just going off on one on many tangents in this episode, or would you like it a bit more? Scripted, do you think? I don't think you'd cope the other way around. Nah, it depends what the topic is. No, not as genuinely, not even as a bad thing, just as your personality of not you want to know. You know what, in all honesty, it really does just depend what it is.

1:03:08 There are there are some things where I where I just feel like, oh, I need to be more cleared up. I need to know kind of where we go next. I revel other things. I revel in ignorance, misinformation. Call me Mr Information. Should we give it a go right in, in within the next month at some point, if an episode comes out where where I'm not, I don't know. I'm not Privy to the conversation, you know, I give it a go if it doesn't. That's every. Week. Hilarious. If it doesn't come out, you know that we tried it and I hated it and we didn't release it. That's it, follow us. Share of a friend. Do all that good stuff please. It helps them massively rate it. All that good stuff. If you got this far, you must have well maybe not enjoyed it but been engaged by it. Must be one way or the other. Engaged enough to like click on the just find, find the button where you can click on the rate and five stars. A lot of people don't and sometimes there's a couple of clicks.

1:03:56 Some people listen for mums and haven't done it, which might be you. Do it. See you next time. See you.