Claire Armitstead, ASCL Cymru president, has warned that the lack of sufficient funding to cover the rising cost pressures on schools risks failing the generation of Covid learners.
When addressing the ASCL Cymru annual conference, which starts today at Radisson Blu Hotel in Cardiff, she will say:
“In all areas, in all schools, deprivation has increased.”
“Poverty will directly impact on their education and life chances because we cannot fund the support and the systems they need. We all know we are seeing a regression in skills and we need to do more, to intervene more, support more and challenge more just to break even. And when funding stops the intervention stops. Our ability to recover our children stops and our children are failed by a system that does not meet their needs or provide the structures they need to regain their learning.
“The sudden change in our contexts, in the vulnerabilities of our children and the huge gaps in their learning means more funding is needed not less. Or we systematically fail the Covid learners. To cut funding now is immoral. It tells a child with regressed skills to give up, it tells a child from poverty not to dream and it tells a child in crisis we don’t care.
