Dear Mrs May,
Three billion pounds.
This is the sum of money that schools will have cut from their funding under your Government.
Three billion pounds.
My child's school alone will have cuts of £82,563 by the year 2020. That's £-432 per pupil and three redundancies.
The redundancies have already been made. They were teaching assistants. Adults with vital roles in the support of our children and their education. Adults who have now lost their jobs and income.
Because of you.
You stood on the steps of Downing Street and promised you would run a country that works for EVERYONE.
Please explain to me how THIS works for everyone.
Because I'm struggling to understand.
I need to you to explain.
These cuts can only have negative consequences. An increase in class sizes and therefore lower standards of support, more pressure on teachers and loss of jobs, subjects being cut, as well as extracurricular activities.
Where does this leave our children? Our future generation. You lied.
Under your Government I don't see a country that works for everyone.
I see a country that works for the elite.
A country that is divided by social class.
I see a Government that doesn't WANT working class children to excel.
Under your Government how can I encourage my children to have hopes, ideas and ambition?
How do I tell them they can be or achieve anything they want to?
When the support in their classroom decreases due to your cuts, and their education suffers, how do you propose I tell them that they're being punished for not belonging to the right social class?
How can I teach them to be open minded and never discriminate, when they themselves are being discriminated against?
I wish you could meet my son. He is five. One of the youngest in his class. He is funny, loud and charismatic. He is behind his peers and is unable to work at the same level as them, therefore needing support from a teaching assistant. A teaching assistant who along with myself is helping him learn to read, supporting him to form letters, teaching him to have confidence. A teaching assistant who has just been made redundant as a result of your cuts.
Although I'm reassured the school will do everything to maintain a decent level of support, they can only work with the tools they have. And you're stripping those tools from them, one by one.
It's more than likely my son will have to go down the route of applying for funding to aid his learning. That means fighting to place a label on him that we do not want just so he can have a decent amount of educational support.
If you care about the children of this country. ALL the children in this country, you need to recognise that they aren't numbers on a page that can be shifted about. They are human beings. Give our children the opportunity to become what they strive to be and reconsider these cuts to our education system.
Our children are not a burden on the country's finances.
They are an investment in its future.