It feels like levelling up has not happened at all. In fact, worse than that: it feels like we have been levelled down. Poverty is now hurting more people, more sharply.
Oldham is a poor town. In 2016 it was the most deprived in England. My own school is in one of the more affluent parts of town and in the middle quintile nationally. Yet our intake, which comes from a little further afield than the immediate vicinity, has fallen to the fourth quintile. The families sending their children here are getting poorer.
I listed in a Leaders Council article, published on September 6, 2022, the sort of thing we do to help mitigate families’ increasing struggle to make ends meet. Since then, we have had to go even further. We’ve changed the school uniform policy to allow for coloured shirts, since whites stain more easily and proud families want to send their children to school looking smart. Coloured polo shirts will look smart for longer. Every pound, every penny saved counts.
In our harvest festivals, we collected for our local food aid hub. The collection was the most generous I have ever known. People understand there is real need; some of our parents may well be using the hub themselves.
People also know the food banks, though needed more than ever, are facing reduced contributions as the ability of donors to donate is attacked by biting poverty. The staggering thing is that this school community is in a better state than many.
I have worked in education for a long time. I remember as little as fifteen years or so ago, when funding was so much better. It does not need to be like this.
In schools back then, we did not have to be forever considering redundancies; we did not suffer year-on-year cuts to the budget. The government did not send us surprise, mid-year financial deficits to plug. That is what we face today.
Budgeting has had less to do with accounting recently as it has had to do with interpreting unfolding politics. For instance, we’d shelved dealing with energy costs rising exponentially on the belief - thankfully proved well-founded - that eventually the government would have to act; although we had to wait until late September to be informed of the details.
Unfunded pay rises, increased pension contributions, increased energy costs and frozen pupil premium payments…we’ve taken all of that on. In 2010-11, education spending was 5.6 per cent of the national income, now it’s 4.4 per cent. The Institute of Fiscal Studies’ annual report on education spending is damning in its analysis of the impact of the cuts: “These patterns run counter to the government’s goal of levelling up poorer areas.”
I try to judge the government’s intentions, whether levelling up remains an aspiration. It certainly did not seem so for the previous prime minister.
I looked to the “fiscal event” to see what help would come the way of schools and it was akin to watching a dentist prescribe sugary drinks to treat an abscess.
Poverty is getting more acute. Levelling up matters. It is needed even more now than it was in 2019. £5 billion was set aside for levelling up. It sounds a lot of money to the likes of me, but the Sunday Times Rich List tells me there are 28 people (I doubt any are local) who could spend that money from their own pockets and still be billionaires. We notice that the collective wealth of the richest grows.
My town has submitted two £20 million bids for the Levelling Up Fund: one in the east of the town to support green initiatives and facilitate the drive to be carbon-neutral by 2030; and one in the west for creative, cultural developments such as refurbishing a theatre and re-opening the old library.
It would be very nice if the bids are successful; but they will not come close to muzzling the very real bite of increased poverty which is being felt across town.
Key Points:
• Rising poverty in local communities suggests the opposite of levelling up is happening.
• Inflationary pressures put further strain on stretched school budgets.
• Levelling up funds won’t touch the sides of poverty.
This article originally appeared in The Leaders Council’s special report on ‘The Levelling Up agenda’, published on November 30, 2022. Read the full special report here.
