Teachers go as spending cuts take toll

Almost 150 teachers and school staff in the Black Country and Staffordshire are being made redundant or redeployed following cuts to education budgets, it emerged today.

Jobs are being axed due to falling pupil numbers as well as funding problems.

In Wolverhampton 14 teachers, 22 teaching assistants and other staff will lose their jobs by the end of July.

Across Staffordshire 109 full time teaching posts are to be axed at 55 schools including Codsall Community High School, which is set to make up to eight teachers redundant due to falling pupil numbers.

In Walsall two teachers at Lindens Primary School in Streetly will go.

Another school, Walsall Academy in Bloxwich, had its budget slashed by £300,000 and jobs could go as a result.

In Dudley, one teacher is being made redundant and 25 are being redeployed.

And today the Department for Education announced it was to further slash each Black Country authority's budget by around £2 million.

Birmingham is losing £7.6m and Staffordshire £3.7m.

Councillor Christine Mills, Wolverhampton City Council's children and young people's chief, warned today "Hopefully some of these positions can go through people leaving or retiring."

David Cole, Wolverhampton general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: "If schools don't get substantial increases they will come back with more redundancies in the future. They cannot continue as they are with frozen budgets."