MP calls for Government to start listening to brave South Lakes head teachers

During a debate in Parliament on school funding yesterday, local MP Tim Farron urged the Government to start listening to local head teachers who are publicly speaking out about the damage that funding cuts are having on their schools.

This week, 16 head teachers from schools in Kendal sent out a joint letter to parents asking them to lobby the Government over the crisis.

In the letter, they describe that the real effects that the £2.4m cuts over the past five years have had on their schools - fewer teaching staff, less support for children with special educational needs, and fewer subject choices.

Speaking during the debate, Tim said: "We've got to a breaking point now, a point of immense frustration which has led to headteachers who would normally have dutifully got on with the job, to now speak out.

"The letter from the head teachers to parents is a brave, unprecedented thing to do and they deserve for us to take notice and they deserve the Government to take notice - we must listen.

"Any country's assets are its people and especially its young people. So, to underfund our schools in this way is not just cruel but it's also incredibly stupid in undervaluing that which is our greatest asset. Investment in our education is an investment in our country's future."

Tim finished his speech by quoting a local head teacher who wrote to him ahead of the debate, saying: "In the last two years we have made reductions to teaching and support staffing, with no reduction in the overall workload. All we get is hackneyed and frankly quite pathetic suggestions from the Department for Education on how to economise. I love my job, but I do not wish to be the head of a school in a state system that is on route to economic meltdown."