Статья "Schools in England are facing bankruptcy - here's what the government could do to help"

The combined effect of the cost-of-living crisis with unexpected salary costs have already made it almost impossible for schools to balance budgets in 2022. Tables published by the Department for Education show that by the end of the 2020/21 financial year, 8% of local authority-maintained schools were in deficit. Of those with a surplus, the reserve which can be carried forward and which could potentially be used to support the budget in a difficult year was an average of 322,000 for secondary schools. The government has been encouraging schools to convert to academy status as part of multi-academy trusts, but things are little better for these schools. Aside from the obvious answer of injecting more money into the system, there are some policy decisions which could ease things for schools even if they do not solve the root cause of the problem. The targeted nature of the funding means that it is difficult for schools to spend it where it is most needed, on qualified teachers, but there is little evidence that it represents good value for money in its current form. It could well be time to respond to calls to wrap the pupil premium funding into the national funding formula for schools. Schools would still receive the pupil premium in proportion to the number of disadvantaged children, but could spend it in a more flexible way. Similarly, the National Tutoring Programme provided schools with 349 million in 2022-23 towards the cost of qualified tutors to help children catch up on learning lost during the pandemic. Others need months or years of planning: reducing the choice of subjects in secondary schools can save costs but would need to be initiated now in order to take effect next September. It is hardly surprising that Leora Cruddas, chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts, has said that it is not realistic to expect budgets to be balanced within existing limits. This provides a chance to commit to a per-pupil funding increase that is at least in line with inflation, as well as adjusting the formula to reduce the strings attached to some aspects of funding.

Статья "The Key to Getting Students Back in Classrooms" by Phyllis w. Jordan

And 73 percent of schools reported that student absenteeism disrupted learning in the 2020-21 school year, according to a survey conducted by the U.S. To get students back into the classroom this year, school districts are abandoning the punitive, truancy-based approaches deployed in the past and instead turning to innovative programs that engage students and families. They are using federal Covid-19 relief money to reach out to families in texts and letters, to recruit mentors to connect with chronically absent students and to invest in the data systems needed to track who is missing and how much school they have missed. In Fulton County, Ga., it means creating connections and flexible schedules at schools to hold on to students with "one foot out the door". Torrington, a mill town in Connecticut's northwestern corner, saw its chronic absenteeism rate more than double to 32 percent of its students in the 2020-21 school year from 14 percent before the pandemic, according to district records. Progress came with a widespread effort to visit families in their homes and persuade students to return to school. 7 million in American Rescue Plan funding toward home visiting."When the pandemic hit, we realized that everyone was having engagement and attendance issues because of all of the trauma families were facing," said Kari Sullivan Custer, who oversees attendance efforts for the Connecticut State Department of Education."It hit the high-need communities the most where the disparities already were, so we put a lot of resources there". When she came down with the virus last winter, one of the families she visits made her chicken soup and delivered it to her doorstep. The district also opened a teen center in partnership with the city and worked to make students feel safe and welcome back at school, said Susan Fergusson, assistant superintendent of Torrington Public Schools. By the end of the year, the chronic absenteeism rate had dropped to 23 percent, a number Ms. Montgomery said she and her colleagues spent years reducing the district's dropout rate, only to see that progress cut in half by the pandemic. With 30 to 50 students and three dedicated staff members in each academy, the program offers flexible hours, credit recovery and extra support for students who are off track for graduation.