There has been a lot of protests taking place in West Sussex due to budget cuts in the education sector. In west Sussex alone we are seeing cuts the equivalent of 944 teaching posts, schools are doing the best they can to give a quality education to every child in this country but the cant keep doing that if they don’t have the resources. I spoke to a languages teacher in secondary education from a school in a West Sussex about the effect the cuts are having.

Have you seen a change in schools approach to student’s education?

Personally at this school I don’t think we have been affected to badly, yet. But what I have noticed is the loss of somethings we took for granted, so we have a lot of restraints on photocopying and printing. I’m buying a lot of stuff I didn’t buy before like paper and basic things with my own money.

These cuts have been gradually happening over the last few years, but how long do you think schools can cope with these cuts?

We no longer have teaching assistants or invigilators which means learning support assistants are often pulled out of lessons to do exams and assessments. How long, I think it’s hard to say a specific time, but things are undeniably deteriorating, though that’s a difficult question to answer things are not looking good.

We all know there are cuts to the budget, but to what extent are the cuts affecting student’s education?

There is a lot less individual time, as if I have thirty or more students in a class, all with different needs, as much as I try, you try to differentiate and give extensions to more able students, but we are only human we cannot possibly meet the needs of thirty plus students every lesson. So it does affect student’s education, I do feel that sometimes I’m not meeting all the needs that are there, these budget cuts are definitely having an effect.

It doesn’t matter which government we have there isn’t enough funding for schools but there isn’t enough funding for the NHS either so it’s unlikely we will see a change for the better anytime soon the real question is whether schools get the funding in time and before the collapse of government funded education, also is there a solution at the moment?