'Huge crisis' in education funding across the North East and Teesside
The school leaders union NAHT held a conference over the weekend
We are hearing how there is a 'huge crisis' in education funding at schools across the North East and Teesside.
School leaders' union, NAHT, held a conference at the weekend with some saying they are struggling to afford basic costs to meet the needs of their pupils.
It comes as many are relying on income from charitable grants or fundraising for things like classroom supplies.
Nik Jones is a secondary school teacher in County Durham and from the branch's National Education Union. He said: "We see this happening all the time with bake sales, fairs or non-uniform days. It used to be when I was a kid generally speaking they were done to raise money for charities, and now a lot of the schools are having to operate as charities because things like books and pens are very, very difficult at the moment for budgets to stretch but also to try and do things like school trips.
"We know of some local academies that spend tens of thousands of pounds every year on hiring companies to help them raise funds via charities and via other fundraising events in order to be able to afford equipment but I think it does emphasize exactly how difficult the situation is.
"There's really desperate situations and I know there are some schools that are fundraising for books, pens, rulers, and calculators but I know of some others that are fundraising because windows need replacing. There's also an awful lot of schools who are raising funding to do extra curricular activities or to have sports days.
"The budgets are pulled so thin that there's no spare money for anything other than the absolute bare essentials are unfortunately as we all know, the real world doesn't allow you to just save the bare essentials because there's also something that breaks, replacing or something that goes wrong, and of course an additional cost to that is staffing.
"There's a worry that schools are starting to close down. You've already seen that actually in the county, some of the smaller schools made it clear that they're going to have to close in the next year or so. Some of the bigger schools can just about to survive and nowhere is that crisis more widely felt than special educational needs because there aren't any places in the North East at all anymore.
"We're going to see less choice of parents about which school they can attend, we're going to see less local schools particularly in those rural environments. Those schools are going to be hit first and they're going to start closing so children are going to have to travel significantly out of their local area in order to go school, and we're going to see class sizes continuing to increase."