Earlier this month, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak were accused of empty “sugar-rush policymaking” on education, as they titillated Tory members by promising a wave of new grammar schools in England. “It grabs a headline but has no real substance,” said Sir Chris Husbands, one of the country’s leading education experts. Meanwhile, out in the real world, headteachers whose schools are still recovering from the damage wrought by Covid are racking their brains over how to finance the coming school year.
Unless significant new money is found, spiralling energy costs – which are not covered by the cap on household bills – threaten to tip many budgets over the edge. As the Guardian reports this week, many schools in England face rises of 200% or more, and the cost of heating and lighting classrooms is predicted to soar further as the winter goes on. Combined with the impact of food price rises and general inflation, and the decision by the Department of Education to award unfunded pay rises to teachers (still well below inflation), this means schools face a perfect financial storm. One London head reports that the pay rises alone will mean a £150,000 budget shortfall, even before energy costs are taken into consideration.
Kenneth Baker and Justine Greening, two former Conservative education secretaries, have both underlined the need for more support. The current settlement on funding, agreed last year, was intended to restore spending to the pre-austerity levels of 2009/10 by 2024. But the assumptions underlying it belong to a different world. Instead, as Lord Baker points out, schools risk entering a new cycle of “actual financial decline”. Concretely, that will mean fewer new staff appointments and bigger classes, a shrinking curriculum with less space for “expendable” subjects such as music and photography, cancelled school trips and the further degradation of the already dilapidated school estate. The cost of school meals may rise sharply. The need to conserve energy and slash expenditure will also undermine the ability of schools to offer wraparound care to children from families at the sharp end of the cost of living crisis. The role that some schools played during phases of the pandemic, when they became vital community hubs, will be a financial impossibility.
Covid’s disastrous impact on schools means that they can ill-afford another wave of disruption. But school leaders in England justifiably fear that as multiple crises demand the attention of Boris Johnson’s successor, education funding will be low down the list of priorities. While Ms Truss and Mr Sunak have avoided the issue, ministers have insisted that existing budgets must suffice.
This holding position is fast becoming unsustainable, as the financial goalposts move at a frightening pace. The government must not devolve the jeopardy of an unforeseen and unpredictable crisis on to schools. Policymaking in these dire circumstances is far from easy. But whoever the next prime minister appoints as education secretary and chancellor must acknowledge the pressure on budgets and accept the case for increased support. During austerity, Conservative-led governments imposed 10 years of real-terms cuts on school spending per pupil. Mr Johnson’s government then failed to properly fund catch-up programmes following the pandemic, deepening educational divides. To adequately atone for that legacy, the next administration must offer more than ideological crowd-pleasers delivered at leadership hustings.
