The delayed publication on Friday 20th July 2018 at the end of the School year of a ‘workload reduction toolkit’ for Schools has now been followed by the publication of a ‘cost cutting toolkit’ on Friday 31st August at the end of the last week  of the School holiday and either at the beginning of a new financial year after decisions have already been made, or four months before they are made depending on which financial year the schools have adopted. Such publications if based on experience from local schools and put together by School teams and published at the right time of year could be very useful. However this stage was passed a long time ago in the first few years after the Government started to cut funds. In those days it was Michael who used to stand up at events and explain to teachers that they needed to cope with the change “If people say ‘It’s all just a bit too much’, my view is ‘man up!'”.

One of the problems is that the Politicians like Damien and a businessman and Academy Trust founder like Theodore are clearly very distant from the coal face of School work. It is this distance from the reality which helps people like Theodore to make what felt like a sensible suggestion back in May at the Conference of the Association of School and College Leaders. When he addressed the heads of hundreds of Schools and Academy Trusts he told them to prevent their teachers from using colour photocopies to save funds! I suspect he made many other comments during his speech at the time but it only takes one comment like that to display a complete lack of understanding as to how schools work and what pressure they are under and have been under for nearly a decade. Most businesses, let alone every School that owns a colour photocopier is very aware of the cost of replacing the multiple toners and so will already have made it clear that colour reproduction, whilst vital for some subjects is more costly than the more basic black and white images and so should only be used sparingly.

In settings such as Local Education Authorities or even the Multi Academy Trusts, it is possible for the leaders of the groups of schools to bring together the folk concerned and ask them to suggest ways of saving money that can then be shared with the others. This is a form of collaborative involvement and it probably happens in any case. It may even be possible for the Government to ask each LEA or Academy Trust to suggest ideas that they have found particularly beneficial and for the top layer agency to then share such ideas more widely. However that is a very different approach to a Government deciding the best ideas and then calling on Schools to adopt them. On top of this is the fact that a great deal of the information included in such toolkits has been in circulation for many years and so the production of yet more repetitive campaigns adds no value but more cost to the budgets and that the real challenge is for Hinds and Agnew to put pressure onto the Government for more money to be released to the Schools they are supposed to be supporting, not putting pressure on teachers to justify the colour images they are copying.