Save Our School Hours - Vale View Reddish

Vale View Primary School, Mill Lane in Reddish have taken the difficult and drastic decision to close the school at 12:45 on Friday afternoons. This means children will have to go home early, or if parents are working they will have to pay for childcare at the school or make other arrangements.

Chair of Governors - Frederick Van Deursen - stated in a recent letter to parents that ‘current costs are not sustainable’ and the school ‘face significant deficit if we do not take action.’ Although we recognise the dire financial situation Vale View Primary is in and there is no proposed change to how much time the children get with teachers. We the undersigned ask the school to work with the wider community to find an alternative solution to ease the funding issues. We ask that the school remains open for 5 days a week 9:00-15:15. Early closing on a Friday presents a number of issues for many parents and children at the school and the wider community. Not only does this disrupt the children's routine, but it also creates issues for working parents and those with caring responsibilities. We acknowledge that the contact time for children will be the same, it is the disruption to local families and community that is at the heart of the problem. This change in hours is just not acceptable to us and we urge the Governors to reconsider.

We believe the school has found a local solution for a national problem. Their budget issues have been created by a lack of funding from central Government. 91% of schools across the country are affected and are facing real terms funding cuts of £2.5bn. 90 out of 96 schools in Stockport face cuts with a total, real terms loss of £6.4m which equates to £169 per pupil.

Accepting this change in the school week will potentially create issues for all schools in the future. If schools continue to show that they can manage the chronic underfunding in this way, then the Government will assume schools can cope with the current real terms cuts and any further cuts in the future. We need to be strong as a community and help the school find other ways to manage the shortfall so that we don’t pave the way for 4 ½ day week to become a normality for UK school children. We the undersigned, commit to working with Vale View Primary to secure more funding for our school and all schools.