A bleak picture of the finances of Sandwich’s grammar school has been painted in a letter to parents.

It comes after pupils started a petition against the planned loss of sporting provision at Sir Roger Manwood’s School.

The document procured more than 200 signatures on Thursday lunchtime prompting the head teacher Lee Hunter to release a letter entitled “funding crisis in schools”.

It says it aims to “fill parents in on the wider picture” and calls for them to petition the Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond MP against budget cuts.

He listed mitigating measures they have taken and plan to deliver to address a long list of funding cuts. This includes the controversial removal of sporting “games” other than for Year 7 from the curriculum.

In the letter Mr Hunter said: “These actions have all been undertaken in order to protect our front line service – the education of our students. However, this has become increasingly difficult to do. Despite the ever increasing pressure on the school’s finance, the school has managed, unlike almost any other local school, to avoid making staff redundant or remove any subject from the curriculum.

“Sadly we have now reached the point where that is no longer the case and we can not continue as we have in the past.”

What Mr Hunter termed “realistic possibilities” to keep the school viable include: larger class sizes at A-Level; passing the costs for all extra-curricular activities to parents (this includes the Duke of Edinburgh Award, the school’s CCF and overseas sixth-form trips. Parents will have to pay if their child is involved in a school sports squad, the same as it would for out of school activities.)

As well as removing games, the Sixth Form Enrichment Programme will be dropped from the curriculum, but there will be increased PE Lessons in the year group affected to release specialist staff to teach their subjects. This is because the school “can not afford to employ any more staff” despite having to run extra classes in Year 10 next year as the five form entry expansion project moved into the upper school.

The length of the two week timetable from 50 periods to 49 could reduce staffing pressures too.

A spokesman said the letter had been released earlier than planned because the rumour broke out about changes to sporting provision.

A handful of email complaints were received prior to the letter being sent.

One parent, who does not wish to be named, said he and his child chose Sir Roger Manwood’s because of the sporting programme.

Mr Hunter's call to parents to protest the Chancellor is an unusual stance for a local authority employed head teacher.

In his letter to parents he details points to raise with MPs and how to answer objections.

He said: “If you are told that the overall education budget is the highest ever please respond that it may be true but as the number of pupils in schools has risen nationally at the same time the ‘per-pupil spend’ has not and that is the thing that is having a disastrous effect on schools.”

He points out myths about ring funding and the National Funding Formula and added: “The real issue is that the total amount allocated for education needs to be much higher."

Yesterday, (Tuesday) the school did not respond to our requests for details about which sports would be dropped or how this would affect the hours of physical activity pupils undertake.
Mr Hunter did add: “Over the last five years the school has managed to avoid taking actions that many other schools did but it can no longer sustain things as they are in the financial climate.
“A letter has gone out to parents to explain.
“It is with great regret that these actions are being taken and as a head teacher who resigned recently said, ‘this is not why any of us came in to teaching’.”