#schools

The cost of living crisis is going to have lots of unforseen consequences in the UK.

I reckon it’s going to hit education hard.

1) Schools in expensive areas will increasingly struggle to recruit. Rent in these areas will be unaffordable on a teacher salary and commuting is too expensive.

2) Teachers will be taking on additional work like tutoring etc in order to make things work financially. This will mean they’re less available in the evenings etc to run clubs/revision classes/facilitate trips etc. Middle class kids will just do more clubs outside of school or get a tutor. Working class kids will miss out.

3) A lot of teachers spend a lot of their own money on resources for their classes- everything from pens to lend, to resources to make lessons more interesting, to display items for the classroom. This will become increasingly unaffordable. Schools with a lot of middle class kids may be able to tap into parent donations for some of this stuff. Schools with a lot of disadvantaged kids won’t.

4) Funding for things like free school meals won’t increase per child, but as the cost of everything increases, schools will have to do more with less.

5) Literally keeping the lights and heating on will eat up more and more of the school budget. This will mean less money and funding for other things.

There’s probably even more I haven’t come up with, but it’s worth thinking about.