Many school business professionals find themselves in an impossible position, trying to balance budgets but knowing the only way to achieve this is by making unpalatable cuts to provision. The lack of certainty, combined with increasing cost pressures from every direction and an almost daily increase in the scope of responsibility, is making life near impossible for many.
There are a number of undeniable truths about the state of funding in the English education system. Money is not distributed equally:
- Resources are rightly targeted to the areas of greatest need, but it does affect what’s left.
- Revenue streams vary according to school context, expenditure varies by school type, and reserves vary from one setting to the next.
- So, you would not expect the national funding picture to be dominated by a single narrative, but it is.
The picture is complex; the narrative is simple. The level of resource provided for our schools is no longer sufficient to sustain the expectations of society.
Despite the Department for Education’s claims of “more money than ever”, there are more pupils than ever, the escalation in complex needs continues, school provision ever-increasingly encompasses social and psychological care, whilst school buildings are accumulating a backlog of maintenance, repairs, refurbishment and safety works.
Parents in both maintained schools and academy trusts might reasonably expect for their children, through tax revenues: school buildings that are safe and comfortable to occupy; class sizes that provide for individual attention; staff who are experienced, qualified and motivated; school leaders with the capacity and resource to ensure quality of care, opportunity and learning; governors who are not beset with impending financial collapse.
But the needs of the most vulnerable are not being met. Our estate is crumbling, and capital allocations and grants are woefully inadequate to keep pace with necessary repairs, refurbishments and rebuilds. Schools are being asked to do more every day without the funding to match. Inflationary pressures are not being met with adequate government support.
It is true that some schools and trusts are better placed to manage this period of economic turbulence, but even the most resilient are now having to make unpalatable decisions about their operating model.
For the schools and trusts most exposed to these financial pressures, often not of their making, life is very perilous and perhaps even existential. Auditor reports for the last year signal an increased likelihood of insolvency for highly successful schools. A high proportion of schools are forecasting that they will “be bankrupt” in the next two years, a minority even sooner.
The Government repeatedly refers to the extra £2 billion added to schools’ budgets in 2022/23. But much of this money has been spent already on escalating energy bills, unfunded pay increases and other inflationary costs.
The unresolved teacher pay dispute cannot be settled without significant additional cash for schools, but schools will not be able to avoid deficits unless the increases in resource far outstrip this one essential element.
ISBL continues to champion DfE benchmarking tools, an embedded approach to integrated curriculum and financial planning (ICFP), an effective procurement and energy strategy, and support in the form of a School Resource Management Adviser (SRMA) visit – but the problem is now much bigger than any of these support mechanisms.
So what next for our school system? The Prime Minister in his first public address following the leadership election made it clear that he believed education was critical to building the strong foundations for any successful nation.
Whilst there is an important conversation to be had about optimal structures and their effectiveness and resilience, no system change – however commendable – can fully address the fundamental funding inadequacies of our system.
A recent comment by the Secretary of State appeared to suggest that the Government believes teacher pay claims are “economically incoherent”.
The argument appears to be supported by the intriguing synthesis of two fiscal undesirables. The Government is suggesting that we should avoid baking in inflation at all costs and that this is what will happen if we start to get wages spiralling out of control.
The idea that a modest uplift to public sector pay, after years of pay erosion, could be construed as “spiralling out of control” is perhaps a bit of a stretch, particularly in the context of a system haemorrhaging teachers and school business professionals at a rate of more than 30%.
The relationship between pay growth and inflation is complex, but even the International Monetary Fund (IMF) acknowledges that “wage-price spirals” are rarely associated with subsequent inflationary episodes.
Private sector pay grew by seven per cent in just three months from August 2022, and no one attributes the current inflationary environment to an uplift in salaries for those employees. The Government has consistently explained the rapid rise in inflation with reference to global factors, not public sector pay, so why now!
Stephen Morales
