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When we hear of people liberating supplies from the stationery cupboard for personal use, we joke about how we do the opposite. Photograph: Alamy
When we hear of people liberating supplies from the stationery cupboard for personal use, we joke about how we do the opposite. Photograph: Alamy

Secret Teacher: buying supplies my school can't afford costs me a fortune

This article is more than 7 years old

There was a time I could have claimed expenses, but with high expectations and continued funding cuts I have to pay

I have been a teacher for 15 years and have always known that the state schools I have worked in are not wealthy. When I was a young and enthusiastic student I spent a cool amount on stationery and ink in order to make worksheets in many colours, and I provided Post-it notes and highlighters to make my lessons engaging and interesting. Naively, I thought that when I became employed as a real member of staff, I would stop spending so much of my own money on my job – I was wrong.

I landed in a culture of personal investment, with colleagues urging me to buy my own supplies and lead the way. With equipment unreliable or failing in our school, one even brought in her own overhead projector.

As the years have gone by, I have spent a fortune on videos, DVDs, audio visual equipment, cameras, SD cards and tripods for my classes to use – not as additional supplies, but to be used as integral requirements in the subjects I am teaching.

Sometimes I feel that I have no choice. I have been asked to teach units on moving image in rooms with no sound facilities. Rather than failing the students with sub-standard lessons, my conscience has sent me on a late night electrical treasure hunt in search of portable speakers to use the next day.

I have colleagues who’ve spent hundreds of pounds on online subscriptions, and many of us buy our own textbooks to help get our heads around courses that are so tentative in their expectations because the powers that be haven’t really decided if they are worthy or still in flux. We are at the mercy of government changes to courses and the slippery climate of education. We are never standing on firm ground and what we invest in one year may gather dust in a stock cupboard the next.

There were times, years ago, when I could have submitted my receipts to my school and claimed for my expenses. Now in a cash-strapped, deficit-driven culture of firm frugality, but with high expectations, I have to absorb this cost as part of my professional role.

At the start of the year, we discussed as a school the fact that students frequently come ill-equipped for learning, and our senior leadership team decided we should give out equipment. We were given boxes of 10 pencils, which disappeared within weeks and were a laughable salve for this issue when the school has a clear pen-only policy. Pens aren’t that expensive, and I won’t let someone in my class miss out on learning if they don’t have one. But when I spend my own personal money and get through them at an alarming, never-to-be-seen-again rate, I can’t help thinking something is wrong.

Challenging the leadership team gets us nowhere. They are dealing with much bigger issues and the nuts and bolts required to set up a student for good learning can be overlooked, even if this is not the intention. I know it’s not just my school. All the schools I have worked in have had similar expectations, although my current one has a pretty spectacular financial deficit.

I work as an examiner in creative subjects. I see a wealth of work from different schools and know that having state-of-the-art technology does not mean the work produced will be the best. I would love to be in a situation where I do not have to struggle for what I need every time I plan a unit of work. I know challenges make for learning and creative thinking, but it would be nice not to battle with broken or missing equipment, or to have to pay for the shortfall myself. My colleagues feel the same. When we hear of people liberating supplies from the stationery cupboard for personal use, we joke about how we do the opposite. Even though my bank balance is suffering and I am starting to feel resentful, morally I am still torn.

The upside of course is that I can be in control of what I create and make the resources exactly the way I want them. This is the choice I make. If I didn’t put my heart and soul into my materials I would have to do without and find other ways to teach using more dated, traditional techniques and front-led, hierarchical methods. This would probably mean that my students would not learn as much as they do, and my work would become theoretical and abstract, not involved and engaging. I know many of my students would find learning in these outmoded methods challenging, even though there is sometimes a place for them.

In the kind of school I work in, the children are already viewed in a negative light by wider society. They do not come from a place of privilege but from a place of struggle and disengagement. If what I am doing can get them fired up about learning and show them that education is a pathway to change, I am going to give it my best effort. I just wish it wasn’t costing me so much money.

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