As the Tories fight it out for another new leader the cost of their chaos is being counted in our classrooms.
Schools in England face a cash catastrophe driven by surging energy bills, rising inflation and unfunded pay deals.
We can reveal that:
Head teachers are UNSCREWING LIGHTBULBS to cut bills and taking OUTSIDE JOBS to fill gaps in dwindling school budgets.
The Conservatives will MISS their 2019 school funding manifesto commitment by £2 BILLION.
Nine out of 10 schools will have RUN OUT OF MONEY by the next school year 11 months from now.
Hundreds of thousands of teachers will vote whether to STRIKE over a 5% pay rise when inflation is running at double that.
Education funding is due to be 3% LESS in real terms in 2024/25 than it was 15 years earlier.
Dr Paul Gosling, president of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: “The Government is too centred on its own internal politics and survival – they’re not thinking about normal people who just want a good health service and a good education service.
“We don’t need big whizzy ideas, we just need the stuff we’ve got to be funded properly and working properly. They are committing vandalism to education at the moment. It’s a real crisis.”
The NAHT this week announced its first strike ballot in the union’s 125-year history.
An initial survey found 55% want to be balloted on a full walk-out and 84% on action short of a strike.
Teachers have been offered a below-inflation 5% rise – 8.9% for starters – but 2% of that must come out of schools’ stretched budgets.
Dr Gosling, head teacher of a primary school in Exmouth, Devon, said: “Head teachers are worried about keeping the lights on and heating classrooms.
“I’ve got a colleague who has taken out as many lightbulbs and light tubes as he can to save cash.
“We’ve got experienced people leaving the profession or retiring early.
“We’ve got teaching assistants on £10.49 who are leaving to work in supermarkets and Amazon depots because they can get better pay and work overtime. The end result is that the education system is being drained of good people.”
Julie Kelly, head teacher at West Meon primary in Hampshire, has taken on extra jobs of her own to secure cash for her school.
She is a guest lecturer at Winchester University because they pay the school £100 for her time.
And she became a NAHT branch secretary because attending meetings means she gets extra into her budget.
She said: “I did that to balance the books for my school.”
Ms Kelly, head of a small school with 56 children and three classes, said the pay rises that have been granted are not funded, which means she has to find £18,000 out of her current budget to pay teachers. She added: “That’s money we don’t have. Every penny we have goes towards the children, including special needs children.”
Scandal-ridden Boris Johnson flew back into the UK today desperate to grab the keys back into No10 after Liz Truss ’s shambolic six weeks in charge.
But it was under his watch that teacher recruits plummeted and he was forced to U-turn by footballer Marcus Rashford on axing free school meals in holidays.
Today former Chancellor Rishi Sunak became the first leadership contender to publicly reach 100 endorsements from his fellow MPs, despite having not officially declared his candidacy. Allies of Mr Johnson claimed he had also passed the 100 mark.
Leadership hopefuls must meet the threshold by 2pm tomorrow if they are to go to a second round of voting among party members.
But as the Westminster frenzy goes on in its own bubble, in the real world the cost-of-living crisis is biting harder than ever with food inflation now at 14.5% – the highest since April 1980.
And 50% of heads say their school will be in deficit this year with almost all expecting to be in the red by next September. It comes as new Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has made clear that all government departments, including education, will have to make cuts.
The Sunday People revealed last week that one million-plus workers including teachers may strike this winter to get fair pay.
Thirteen national education associations and the unions Unite, Unison and GMB today published an open letter to Conservative MPs imploring them to remember the school funding crisis as they vote for the next PM.
The Department for Education said today: “We understand that schools – much like wider society – face cost pressures which is why we are providing schools with £53.8billion this year in core funding, including a cash increase of £4billion.
“All schools will benefit from the Energy Bill Relief Scheme, reducing how much they need to spend on their energy and giving them greater certainty over their budgets over the winter months.”
