There is nothing wrong with healthy debate, I'm all for that. But some of your comments are causing offence because you are being very judgmental and appear to have nothing but your own (not particularly well informed) opinion to base it on. My job is safe, but I agree that there is a huge amount of waste in the public sector and welcome some of this. But looking at it from the inside the changes need to be in the wholesale modernising of processes, not cutting sick pay and pensions as you suggested earlier.

Good post Dee - some people really have no idea about the jobs others do or the responsibilities they have. They only see what they want to see and many are so shortsighted they don't look very far in front of their noses anyway.

I do have sympathy for anyone affected by the cuts but honestly what is the alternative, should we be taxed more and have even less of our hard earned income to live on?
It's never easy when you've worked long and hard to get somewhere in life to have it taken away because your employer can no longer afford to pay all the staff they currently employ, and it makes no difference whether or not that's the public or private sector. The economic problem has to be addressed and it would make no difference who was in government the cuts would still be made. I don't think anyone can consider themselves immune from it though as there will be knock on effects into other sectors.

Surely, that's exactly where the cuts are being made, but NOT in sick pay and pensions (they'd better not cut my pension before I even get it! ). I emphatically heard them say, they will not be cutting pensions, don't know about sick pay, but surely not? The only sick pay they need to cut back on are the scroungers who play golf every sunday and are claiming "incapacity" benefit those would be on my hit list and top of it! There are too many scroungers getting on the bandwagon nowadays, too many youngsters living in households where there's never been a job between the whole family for years, so they know no different, they just sign on,they don't even look for work, it's not in their make-up, but now comes the time when they might just HAVE to go to an interview methinks!

Get those types INTO work and we'll be saving a packet, and can then afford to pay those who CAN'T work the benefit they are due. As Cameron said himself, the system has been abused for far too long, they obviously know what we know and are out to get them. Says she who once had five jobs on the go to pay off a humungous overdraft only one of which was her learned trade, anything is "do-able" you don't have to stick to a job which paid you £50K a year if there isn't one about, no, you take what's on offer and plough on - been there!

Helena

The systems have been in place for at least the last 20 years to my knowledge but with every cut back more and more of them get cut or axed. I am talking about extended services such as the child psychology team, the behaviour support teams,school library services, schools arts teams which enrich the curriculum.

Some of these services just keep being reduced and reduced to the point where a school's entitlement to hours impact on the actual children directly...The others become paid for services to combat the cuts, schools with limited budgets again have to then choose if they can afford to provide that service in their school.

It is an ever decreasing circle of opportunity that the schools fight hard to combat but with tight budgets it is sometimes the case that even paying the salary bills can be hard! Having external course providers such as highlighted in Lynnes post was a way in which knowledge and information was disseminated in a more cost effective way. Instead of one provider training a school. A course is run and a rep from each school attends and then trains the staff back at their school. This has a greater impact on the delivery of the new skill/information taught.

Removing these skilled individuals means that schools do not move forward in the same way as training then becomes limited.......

Good post!

Thanks for all that info, I am not very aware of how it all works in schools nowadays, all I know is, it worked for us when I was at school, and as Trouble has said, it was much, much harder for us back then. Wasn't there talk of people running their own schools, and if that works, then wouldn't that be better? Say the Government gives every school X amount of cash each year, they run it like any other business, they have the money to spend on what they want and have to work on that annual budget? Personally, I think that could be a good idea? Doesn't the NHS run like that anyway (but they're always over budget I know!)

Afterall, private schools are run this way and if it didn't work, then they would be out of business wouldn't they which they aren't, so maybe there should be a leaf taken out of their book and see what's going wrong with our schools and where money can be saved. Then again, they're going to be getting MORE money aren't they, so I don't understand the cuts in staff, it's quite confusing!

That's my point, that there is plenty of room for making the public sector more efficient. But it's about streamling processes across the board. You would not believe the bureaucracy that is involved in the simplest investigation. Forms, authorities and more forms, further authorities blah, blah, blah.

You would not believe the bureaucracy that is involved in the simplest investigation. Forms, authorities and more forms, further authorities blah, blah, blah.


Surely not pen pushing

There was always going to be casualties with the budget cuts and I feel for all that are going to be affected.

I have worked in both the Public (Staff Nurse) and public sector and one of the main differences I have noticed is - in the private sector every penny can be accounted for whereas in the public sector there is a lot of wastage and it oftem seem like the left hand doesnt know what the right hand is doing. So I do feel there are cuts to be made, whether these are the right cuts remains to be seen but something has to be done as we cant continue the way we are.