Writing for The Leaders Council, Nigel Attwood, headteacher of Bellfield Junior School in Birmingham, scrutinises the government’s plans for education funding to ‘revert to 2010 levels’ and emphasises the need for change that will take the sector forward for the benefit of all.
Funding for children, education and children’s services, have been cut to the bone. When services are cut to the bone as much as they have been, schools have been picking up the pieces, trying to fill these service gaps. But as educational budgets continue to be squeezed more and more, this support cannot be sustained in schools – and children continue to suffer as they are not able to get the support they need.
It cannot continue, and it is time to get ‘Back to the Future’.
Education is vital – in every way, in every aspect – and many agree: just Google search Einstein, the Dalai Lama, Malcolm X, Roosevelt, Marian Edelman, Oprah Winfrey [to name a few] and, of course, Nelson Mandela, who once said that: ‘Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world’. Education, in all its forms, helps children to develop academically, socially and to develop the skills needed to succeed, for themselves, their communities and for their country. Education IS vital; children’s services ARE vital.
There is the dilemma. To ensure children grow and develop into successful people, the educational and children’s services systems need to be fully in place to be able to work for our children. Education needs the funding to ensure that the staff, resources and facilities are available so that schools are fully inclusive and ensures that every child has the same opportunities to succeed. We need the ability to make referrals to all the different children’s services, in the knowledge they are there when children need them, not 18-24 months later – or, more worryingly, just too late altogether. Schools are buckling under financial and staffing pressures, and, with the added weight of issues from Covid-19 and other additional costs.
The sheer despair from the education sector when the government triumphantly announced in the October 2021 budget that, by 2024, funding from schools will have returned to 2010 levels was palpable. To put this into perspective, a £1 loaf of bread in 2010 now costs £1.34 [and has shrunk in size!] in 2022. The Bank of England shows an average inflation of 2.3 per cent per year, yet schools are expected to be able to run on a budget that is 34 per cent below where budgets should be now.
On July 2, 2021, a NAO report, commissioned by the DfE stated:
· a 0.4 per cent real-terms increase in per-pupil funding for mainstream schools between 2014 and 2021. The report continued: ‘£2.2 billion: the Department for Education’s estimate of savings mainstream schools had to make between 2015-16 and 2019-20 to counteract unfunded cost pressures.’
· The ‘levelling-up’ of funding has meant a 1.2 per cent average real-terms reduction in per-pupil schools block funding between 2017-18 and 2020-21 for the most deprived 20 per cent of schools
The government will claim that they are funding at ‘record levels’ and let’s be honest, this is true, if looking at hard numbers alone. But looking at this in context: if the numbers of children remained exactly the same [they have increased each year], funding would have to go up each year just to keep up with inflation and fuel costs, but the coming year is seeing extortionate fuel cost rises and increased staffing costs [higher National Insurance and pension costs] – all of which is not being supported by government, and so the £7.1 billion of additional funding from 2021-24 will be swallowed up with staffing and fuel costs.
Further, it is difficult to compute that the UK spent 5.5 percent of its GDP [44th in the world] in 2016 compared to 4.5 per cent [DOWN to 88th in the world] in 2020-21 – a country that is the fifth largest economy in the world. Germany, the fourth largest economy, spends six per cent of its GDP.
On top of this are the cuts to children’s services. Over a ten-year spell from 2010-11 to 2018-19, total annual expenditure in real terms by local authorities in England on services for young people declined by 71 per cent. Annual expenditure tumbled from £1.357 billion in 2010-11 to £398 million by 2018-19.
In a recent [albeit small sample] Twitter poll of school leaders, 67 per cent of schools are already in deficit or will be within two-to-three years. That leaves only a third of schools saying they can remain in budget as it stands, or, put another way, over 16,000 schools will NOT be able to stay in budget by 2024 at the latest – which is damning.
In an article back in March 2021, I stated: ‘If the Covid crisis has done nothing else in the last 12 months, it has highlighted, more than ever before, the serious disconnect between the government’s understanding of what happens in schools…and the reality.' Unfortunately, it feels that this situation has not improved.
Returning to Mandela, he said that: 'A real leader uses every issue, no matter how serious and sensitive, to ensure that at the end of the debate we should emerge stronger and more united than ever before.' People who work in education, the same as those in health and social care, do so because they care and want the very best for the people they work for.
So the question to our government is clear:
'When will funding for Education and children’s services, go "Back to The Future" and be funded, in 2022, at 2022 levels, not 2010?'
Surely our children, and the staff who work so tirelessly for them, deserve much better? Surely it is time for a fairer deal to ensure our children’s, and our country’s, futures are bright and prosperous.
Nigel Attwood recently appeared on The Leaders Council Podcast alongside fellow headteachers, Matthew Jessop [Crosthwaite Primary School, Kendal, Cumbria] and Helena Marsh [Linton Village College, Linton, Cambridge] to discuss the issue of school funding in detail. The full interview can be seen below.
Photo by Jason Sung on Unsplash
