Dear Parents / Carers,
You will know from our newsletters and our campaigning around school budgets that our school has experienced significant cuts. We are not alone in this and for some time schools both nationally and locally have been expected to meet increasing costs whilst their budgets have either remained the same or reduced each year.
Here at Earlsmead, we are looking at potential cuts of £121,564 in 2018-19 and our financial projections show that this will increase each year unless we make significant changes to our spending now.
When considering what changes to make, our main priority is always to ensure that the school is a safe and positive environment for children to learn and grow in and to achieve excellent learning outcomes.
Over the last 18 months we have made a number of changes to reduce our costs but unfortunately these have not been enough and we now have to look at reorganising the school’s staffing structure in order to meet the financial challenges all schools are facing. With this in mind, this week we began a process of Organisational Change at the school. Obviously in any school the largest part of our spending is on staffing and therefore we have had to make the difficult decision to propose to reduce the number of support staff on our team so that we are able to achieve the necessary savings.
This decision has not been taken lightly and is driven entirely by difficult financial realities. It is in no sense a reflection on how we value our support staff or the valuable contribution that they make to the life of the school.
Within the proposed new model we are committed to ensuring that we have enough highly qualified staff to ensure that the needs of children are met and that the school achieves the ambitious outcomes it has for every child.
The process of Organisational Change is a formal process and involves a consultation period for those staff who will be affected by the changes. During this time it is only affected staff who are invited to comment on the proposal and ask any questions that they might have in response to it.
I will write and let you know exactly what the new staffing model looks like early on in January.
Yours sincerely,
Hina Shah
Headteacher