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Budget 2024: A concerning lack of urgency

School funding and finance Government policy
The Budget has been widely welcomed by an education sector used to being ignored by the Treasury. However, Daniel Kebede is still concerned about the lack of urgency in the government’s plans
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The new government has spoken of arresting a decline in the state of the public sector and made this a centrepiece of its work. This is undoubtedly a welcome shift in tone after 14 years of essential services being cut to the bone through austerity measures and deliberate neglect.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ long-awaited Budget at the end of last month is a turning of the page, but it won’t be enough. There remains a long road ahead.

Jeremy Hunt’s last two major fiscal statements as the previous chancellor offered nothing to schools and colleges. This was unacceptable when the effects of inadequate school funding were inescapable, and the consequences of real-terms pay cuts and high workload self-evident.

The recruitment and retention crisis is the direct consequence of government inaction over many years. The Conservatives were content to allow that decline to continue.

With the election of a Labour government, the profession and the unions that represent it have entered new territory. It is a tangible re-set of the relationship and will benefit workers and the economy.

Unlike the previous office-holder, the current education secretary recognises that education and those who deliver it play an important role in this country. We are the “difference makers”. The proper funding of education will reap rewards. Investing in children will be repaid many times over, as they will lead more prosperous lives if the building blocks are firmly in place.

The chancellor and prime minister want to deliver economic growth, and the proper resourcing of education should be central to that aim.

We are however concerned that a sense of urgency is lacking. There were a number of education announcements in the Budget that took a step in the right direction, but none will solve the challenges facing the sector.

Take SEND, for example. We all know that services have been on their knees. Children and young people are not having urgent needs addressed, and the waiting lists have grown exponentially in recent years.

The Budget included £1bn for high needs funding – significantly more than the previous government offered in a single Budget. However, this money will do little to stem the crisis in provision. More than £4.6bn is required per year to resolve the crisis (NAO, 2024), and so Ms Reeves’ commitment falls some way short.

Stepping up the School Rebuilding Programme is important, but again the £1.4bn amounts to a small dent in the £40bn cumulative cut to school capital funding over the Conservatives’ 14 years of mismanagement of the school estate. We still have school environments that are unsafe, with damp, leaks, poor temperature control, and asbestos.

Poverty makes it so much harder for children to realise their potential, in school and beyond. The failure to scrap the cruel and ineffective two-child benefit limit, which would lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty overnight, is truly disappointing.

And breakfast clubs are a start but the government needs to be much more ambitious and introduce universal free school meals, beginning with primary.

The £300m of new money for further education also falls well short of what is needed to grow skills that are pivotal to future economic growth.

Arresting decline should not just amount to seeing schools tread water for another year. The £1.3bn of new money for mainstream schools puts them in a difficult spot. It leaves little room to absorb the next pay award.

So, there is work to be done. We will engage with the government on the issues of SEND, the curriculum and assessment. We will push to see significant progress on pay, sky-high workload, and Ofsted.

But teachers and parents voted for real change and the investment that education urgently needs. We need this new government to be bold, not just in its reform of education, but in putting into the system the funding that will really deliver for pupils, parents and the profession.

 

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