Battered by the pandemic and the rising cost of living, UK schools like Newman Roman Catholic College in Oldham are at the front line of a profound national crisis
UK schoolsShortly before Easter, Glyn Potts began to suspect that the children had not been eating. Potts, a statuesque headmaster in his mid-forties, watched uneasily from the mezzanine over the central lobby of Newman Roman Catholic College in Oldham. Every lunchtime, hundreds of schoolchildren materialised from all directions, jostling out of their classrooms and descending noisily down staircases to the benches below. Many rushed off to collect hot food or to the ever-popular panini counter.
Ministers imposed local lockdowns on Oldham on and off through 2020, in an attempt to quell the spread of disease. As a result, more face-to-face school hours were lost in the area than elsewhere in the country. Potts discovered that some children had begun riding around on the Greater Manchester tram network, using its free WiFi to do their homework. When that service was switched off, they moved to McDonald’s.
There is something reminiscent of military precision to Potts’s controlled demeanour. As he moves through Newman’s corridors, he orders children to tuck in their shirts or tie their shoelaces. His manner with the kids is not brusque but brisk, as if he is reminding them of a standard they’ve mutually agreed to uphold. In his office, I’d noticed a copy of, a best-selling, adventure-themed devotional written by the explorer Bear Grylls.
Potts and I first spoke in August 2022, on a patchy line as he drove his son to watch a women’s Hundred cricket match at Old Trafford. In the last days of that long, politically rancorous summer, the Conservative party leadership campaign was in full swing, following the resignation of Boris Johnson. There was only one other national news story: soaring energy prices.
Potts deemed the school uniform “brilliant, beautiful”, and he meant that sincerely. It was not only a means of instilling discipline, he explained, it also muted the differences between “haves” and “have-nots”. At Newman, 43 per cent of pupils are eligible for free school meals, compared with a national average of 24 per cent. In a low-wage economy, however, free meals are only a superficial proxy for poverty.
As Potts ushered me, businesslike, upstairs to his office, he explained that ever since its opening, Newman has had faulty heating and a leaking roof. Ten to 12 classrooms a day get flooded when it rains, he said, “and in Oldham it rains quite a lot. It’s the drizzle that kills us.” “Anyone want to bet £10,000 the roof didn’t leak over the weekend?” Potts asked at a staff meeting later in the year. “Good,” he replied to the bemused silence. “You would have lost your money.”
I asked what cancelling the school trips might mean for his kids: “You’re going to think I’m over-egging the pudding here, but I can categorically tell you this,” he replied. “We took some children away to Castlerigg, which is a sort of retreat house over in Cumbria, in Keswick, and it was the first time one of the students had seen a live cow. And they were laughing, because they do just look like the cartoon.
“I understand that we have to be accountable for money,” Potts said, of the ministerial impulse to control spending at the centre. But, “we won’t be spending it on headteachers’ golden toilet seats”. Government figures for January to March this year showed an 80 per cent rise in Oldhamers deemed homeless and eligible for statutory rehousing, with a similar rise in the number of children living in temporary accommodation. The town’s homeless figures are now nearly twice the English rate.One Newman pupil trying to revise in the living room of temporary accommodation told the school they were struggling to read. “I can’t do it, the lights aren’t bright enough,” the teenager explained.
Teacher recruitment was becoming nearly impossible. Before Christmas, the school had advertised for seven jobs, some of them on starting salaries of £25,000-£28,000. Three had had no applicants at all by the time I spoke to Potts in April, days after the latest teacher training statistics revealed that the government had missed its recruitment target by 40 per cent over the previous year.
All those issues, and more, are being constantly sifted and addressed by staff. Feedback, said Potts in November, showed worrying signs of emotional strain; staff members told him that they “want to cry sometimes”.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Join Dom Pérignon for a one-of-a-kind evening prepared by British chef Clare Smyth‘A Journey of Creation’ is a one-night-only experience from Dom Pérignon and renowned chef Clare Smyth in London’s Notting Hill
Read more »
British popstar mentored by Eurythmics legend Dave Stewart dies aged 21R.I.P
Read more »
British popstar mentored by Eurythmics legend Dave Stewart dies aged 21R.I.P
Read more »
50 Afghan British Council workers face deportation to Taliban due to slow Government responseMany of the former British Council teachers are trapped in a hotel in Islamabad and are unable to leave
Read more »