Why are we all so broke?

It's no secret that education is bankrupt financially. And we really need a solution. Teachers are leaving in droves, resources are stretched thinner than the morals of those who sell them on TESonline, and everywhere you look someone is whining about it. Well, I ask you, if we're constantly financially bankrupt, isn't it time to explore the obvious option to solve the situation. Principals and principees, isn't it about time that we started exploiting and monetizing (z intentional, and to be pronounced 'zee').

Kids, let's start going morally bankrupt and get ourselves out of this hole.

So here's my starters guide to leaching every available penny out of your ailing school. Put your ethics in your junk mail folder and get yourself ready for your invite to the ceremony for your peerage.

1: Don't sell off your school fields. Repurpose them instead:

Why sell them off when they can be used for far more long term investment opportunities? One school I work with as a consultant is reaping (quite literally) the benefits of their new 6-acre graveyard facility. Kids don't play sport anymore, everyone knows that.

Or if you're a little bit queasy about all those dead bodies, what about kennels, or building a factory. Possibly, a factory producing school uniform that you could make mandatory for your students. It's kickback city!

2:  14 weeks off a year? More like 14 weeks of opportunity!

Think of all those days when your school is empty of the money-sucking bastards that you have to educate. If the Natural History Museum can host sleepovers then surely your school can host unlicensed raves! You've got dingy classrooms full of graffiti, bathrooms that look like something out of Trainspotting and a massive school hall; it's just like that time I saw someone die in a drum and bass club in East Berlin. And during the day you can host post-apolocalyptic themed paintball games. With the colours of your classroom walls, it's not like anyone's going to notice, and at least they'll get their first lick of paint in twenty years.

3: Who needs teachers, when they can just google it instead.

I mean, why not just download the BTEC spec and give the kids it. They can just sit on the school's aging computer network and google all the answers. They'll be fine.

Or, maybe you could sell your teachers to other schools. Franchised teaching; it's the new way. The teachers can livestream their lessons to other schools for a pretty penny in the school's coffers. And while they're at it, maybe they can get involved with the next idea:


4: Corporate sponsorship. Simple and effective, just like Dirtaway, the busy people's kitchen cleaner.

Big Ideas, Big Logos, Big Money. Everyone wants to access the youth market now, and why waste money trying to reach them, through MySpace or Hi5 when you can put the item straight in their grubby hands using someone they trust as the vector. Got a new pair of designer trainers you want to sell, well who better to sell it straight to the kids than the teachers they adore and respect? Everyone knows that students idolise teachers and wish to look exactly like them? What else could explain the current socks and sandals epidemic? Vinyl? Hipsters? Surely the product of teachers during the 90s. Truefact: Every hipster secretly aspires to be Robin Williams in Dead Poets' Society. Why not exploit that. And Parents evenings? What a gift! Parents shopping evenings more like!

5: Sell to kids, or sell the kids!

No, I'm not suggesting anything as barbaric as actually selling the children (you'd never get away with it), but perhaps those children could get a few extra vaccines each year. And by a few, I mean a lot. And by vaccines, I mean any unlicensed drug whose manufacturer is morally questionable enough to test it on children. And that questionable morality means big monies for you.

These are just five of the many ideas you could deploy to truly monetize your site and staff, but with the right employment of a vastly overpaid set of non-teaching staff I'm sure that you can bluesky up your own out-of-the-box-in-the-box radical cost-saving, cash-building methods. Why not just shorten the school day for instance, or cut all of the arts subjects. No, perhaps those two are far too radical to be accepted. No-one will truly accept stripping the curriculum down to it's barest of bare bones and then firing all but a skeleton crew of teachers and plugging the gaps with long-term cover, overstretched LSAs and unprepared NQTs.

no-one.

- Calamity.