Schools may go online one day a week to cut costs

As reported by the BBC, pupils could be taught online one day a week to help schools balance the books, a council has suggested

Every option must be considered to deal with a financial crisis, said the county’s cabinet member for education.

Each school will be asked to decide for itself how to make significant savings next year.

Pete Roberts, the Powys cabinet member for education, told a meeting of the council that school budgets were being looked at “in detail” for “potential solutions”.

“We did suggest the possibility of a four-day week,” Mr Roberts said, “with a fifth day being taught virtually as well as blended weeks of learning as extreme cases for consideration.”

But the he stressed school have been given no “clear directive” to do this, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

“Ultimately it is the decision and responsibility of the headteacher and their chair of governors regarding the school budget,” he said, “and one size does not fit all.”

Eithne Hughes, director of the Association of School and College Leaders Cymru, said the suggestion “underlines the very seriousness of the situation that we have here in Wales”.

“Obviously, if we’ve got children at home for one day a week or half a day a week, we’re going to compound the problems of the children who are in the greatest need. So it has to be an absolute last solution,” Ms Hughes told the BBC Radio Wales Breakfast programme.

“But the fact that it has been considered, I think really is a sign of how difficult the whole situation is.”

“Schools at the moment are trying to juggle and make books balance, when actually they just don’t balance. It’s going to lead to redundancies.”

Schools have been asked to produce plans explaining how they will continue with children’s education, Mr Roberts said.

He said online learning could “reduce the utilities cost for the schools and lead to a considerable saving”.

Wearing coats in classrooms, he added, is something pupils have already been doing.

“For the past two winters in some instances, a few children have had to wear their coats in their classrooms due to windows being open as part of the Covid guidance,” he said, “not because the school could not afford to pay the heating bill.

“With Covid increasing, this situation is likely to happen again this winter.”