Europa School UK

Europa is trying to do more than a typical state school, at a time when government funding of state schools is very tight anyway. Many schools are struggling to make ends meet without making significant cuts to staffing and curriculum. More critically, Europa is still in a transition stage: with only 2 language streams from S1 to S7  and new classrooms needed to accommodate the growing school. Lower than expected funding allocations, increased costs (pay increases, NI and pension costs and general inflation), and limited reserves leave the school unable to cover the costs of the transition stage without raising additional funds.

Other options are limited. The school has been actively pursuing additional funding from the DFE and local council wherever possible, with mixed success.  Seeking funding from external organisations and businesses is difficult without demonstrating significant commitment from parents first, and not a good fit for funding operating costs rather than capital projects.

Ultimately, support from parents is the only practical way of raising the sums required, and the parents and pupils are of course the direct beneficiaries of the unique education Europa School provides.

• Yes, trip funds are used exclusively for taking your children on educational and exciting trips which enhance their learning.

• • • Pay your trip donations

Every primary child is asked for a £65 voluntary donation these are use to enable the children experience life beyond the classroom. If you are struggling to pay in one go please contact us to arrange paying in instalments or find other ways to help.

Sort Code:  306753  Account Number:  25856968

Secondary students are requested to pay by trip, if you have agreed for your child to go on a trip please pay promptly, chasing payment takes a huge amount of time.

• • • Pay for swimming donation in primary year 3

Every parent is asked for a voluntary donation to enable us to take your child for their compulsory swimming lessons.  Europa is a very long way from all pools and have to get coaches, these are expensive and we need your help to fund them.

The National Funding Formula (NFF) was supposed to make education funding fairer for all schools with a standard per pupil funding across the country (currently there is up to 43% discrepancies between per pupil funding in inner cities and the counties, such as Oxfordshire).  However, the government has announced a change to how the NFF is being implemented and they are using what they call a ‘soft’ implementation via the local councils.  This means Oxfordshire County Council controls how the funds are distributed and, unfortunately, ESUK’s funds have been capped by the County. Initially, this arrangement was planned to change in September 2020, but that has now been delayed by a further year to September 2021 at least and the future of the NFF remains unclear beyond that.

Further info from TES on NFF

Increased government revenue funding

The school management team actively pursue additional funding from the Department for Education, with some success. The management and governors managed to get relief from  lagged funding (where we only receive funding for the new Spanish Stream class one year in arrears) for 3 years and a £100,000 grant to implement the new IB diploma programme.

Government capital funding

The school has received a commitment worth approximately £3.2m in funding to bring secondary buildings to a reasonable state of repair.

Language stream specific funding

• • • German – a very active parent has secured help from one source and is actively pursuing other sources of funding and resources.
    • French – early stages
    • Spanish – to be initiated this term

Income from the site

Full exploitation of the site will only be possible once the capital works and landlord works are complete. This will hopefully develop in the coming academic year and engaging with community organisations will also open up new sources of grants to the school.

Donations from local businesses and local independent schools

We have begun a campaign and are contacting local businesses requesting assistance.  We are also working with local independent schools who are supporting us with subsidised training and other invaluable low cost help.

We increased reception class sizes in 2019 to 30 pupils per class.

As a school we have a very flat management structure, we do not have any department heads and although the primary school is very large with a three-form entry, we only have one Deputy Head. In addition, the Principal also carries out the role of Head of Secondary. Our administration team is very small when compared with other schools of a similar size.

We have also renegotiated our contracts with our suppliers to reduce costs and are always looking for ways to decrease costs without impacting on the classroom.

We expect to still need parental contributions until Europa reaches capacity. If the funding position improves, we may be able to reduce funding requirements from parents in subsequent years.

Ongoing, like most schools, we will also look to parents for contributions to deliver capital projects and to improve the school assets.

The school needs to grow to become sustainable and cannot grow without adding a new language stream.

Yes, of course you can, but please bear in mind that if we don’t have you name we can’t thank you personally. It would be really helpful if you could let us know what class your child/ children are in on the donation though.

Some families have discovered that their donations have stopped. If you aren’t getting your acknowledgements then you may need to check it is still active.

Primary

• • • Despite our lower per pupil funding, there are a number of areas where we deliver substantially more than other state primary schools, some of which result in real savings for parents:

      • The benefits of the multi-lingual offering are considerable. By the end of primary every child will be fluent in their stream language.  They will have benefited from immersion teaching with specialist language teachers (mostly native speakers) for half the week over 7 years.  By comparison, paying for just one hour of language classes a week would typically cost £500 or more each year, with far less resulting fluency.  Less tangible, but increasingly recognised, are the long term cognitive benefits gained by learning a second language from a young age.

      • Pupils receive around 105 hours more teaching per year than other local state primaries.

      • Longer school hours are a real help for the majority of working parents. The ability to drop off from 08:00 any day, without having to pay for breakfast club cover , plus the After School Club allowing late pick-ups at until 6pm, make it very feasible for working parents to juggle drop-offs without having to negotiate shorter hours.

      • For any families with siblings across Primary / Secondary or Primary & Pre-school, the ability to limit drop-offs to one location and similarity of hours is a real time-saver at both ends of the day.

      • The scale of the combined Primary/Secondary school means there are viable bus services from many places, giving parents the flexibility to use school buses from reception, which would simply not be possible in most primary schools.

      • The lack of uniform cost is a financial bonus for parents compared to other schools.

      • Primary pupils can use the wider secondary facilities e.g. sports hall,, playing fields etc. both during school and for on-site After-school activities.

      • And finally, the immersion in a multi-cultural experience from such a young age equips our children to be internationally aware, tolerant, world citizens. They develop a broad understanding of different cultures from their friends, with a natural assumption that diversity adds to the richness of all our lives.

Secondary

• • • Very experienced teachers

    • Legacy language sections maintained

    • Participation in Pan-European cultural and sporting events e.g.

      • Model European Parliament
      • Model United Nations conferences

S1 – S5

• • • Third language from S1 (2 periods per week in S1 then three periods from S2)
    • All students study triple science
    • Extra Options which are not normally offered at this stage include:
    • 6 period Maths course in S4 & 5 (equivalent to GCSE higher and AS level)
    • 4 period Economics course
    • 4 period Latin course

    • Our students continue to study 13 subjects up to S5, whereas many schools are now only studying 8 GCSE’s

Sixth Form

Many schools are now only allowing the study of 3 ‘A’ levels equivalent to about 16 hours per week of teaching time or 4 ‘A’ levels which require about 22 hours of teaching time per week at Europa School most of our students have 25 hours of teaching time per week. They study at least nine subjects with at least 5 of these at a time allocation equivalent to A level study.

See this BBC article for reference – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-13266290

‘Free schools are independent state funded schools, set up by groups of parents, teachers, charities, businesses, universities, trusts, religious or voluntary groups, but funded directly by central government.

The schools are established as academies, independent of local authorities. Unlike local-authority-run schools, they are exempt from teaching the national curriculumand have increased control over teachers’ pay and conditions and the length of school terms and days.

Free schools receive no additional money per pupil for their day to day running. Funding is worked out on a per pupil basis, like other state-funded schools.’

For information about how we spend our money at ESUK, please click here.

ESUK will probably have to apply to the government for deficit funding. If they judge us to be failing financially they could ask us to join a Multi Academy Trust (MAT), in which case we would lose our autonomy.  This may mean we would have to stop offering our bilingual curriculum, if they deem it too expensive. This may not happen, but that is the risk.