Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80
- 84)
TUESDAY 4 APRIL 2000
MRS RHON
ROGERS, MS
FIONA THOMSON
AND MS
LIZ JONES
80. All of your staff are not qualified, what
is the ratio of qualified to unqualified? What do you do for the
staff who are not?
(Mrs Rogers) It is one teacher and one full-time LSA
in there.
81. An LSA?
(Mrs Rogers) Learning Support Assistant. They do not
have a professional qualification—
82. The LSA does not?
(Mrs Rogers)—but have worked in the school and
worked with children for a long time and have had pre-school experience
and play group experience before that. They do have access to
the course Julie referred to, however there is no requirement
for them to attend that.
Chairman: We have your local MP with us.
Dr Harris
83. It is a pleasure to combine constituency
work with Select Committee work—I can tick both boxes on
the time-sheet. I am not going ask you any difficult or annoying
questions. As your local MP I would like to ask you about resources.
One thing I heard from Abingdon Primary School, which is in great
difficulties, is it is slightly losing funding each year. You
are hoping new money is still to come your way, however you have
had a significant increment in the last few years to meet the
needs of how you want the school to develop.
(Mrs Rogers) The budget is better this year than it
has been for probably five or six years. It means we are able
to increase staffing this year for the first time.
84. That is September 1999?
(Mrs Rogers) This financial year we are about to go
into is from April 2000 onwards. There was a significant increase
in our budget. All situations are different. We are a rising roll
and that has a knock-on effect as well. What I would like to see
is extra money for the development of Early Years because when
we start something like an Early Years Unit we have to meet certain
criteria. We are working towards the goals, the gold standards
goals, we do not have a set-up fund. Lego came from other people,
some parents had finished with it, or from our own children's
toys, things like that. It would be wonderful to have a good amount
of money to have set that up to start with rather than do it on
a shoestring. I understand the elected members have put some money
aside this year for outside development, we welcome that, but
we would welcome some more to develop inside as well.
Chairman: We will be asking other people that
question shortly. Can we thank you for your help and your time.
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