Schools were on the face of it restored as a national priority by the new government in the October 30 Budget.
They were promised new investment in areas which desperately need it, including SEND provision and school buildings, as well as in core funding.
There was a £2.3bn boost for the main schools budget, including £1bn for SEND. In addition, capital spending was boosted, with an extra £550m for school rebuilding and a further £300m to improve the school estate.
Another £1.8bn will help continue the expansion of government-funded childcare, there was £15m for 3,000 new or expanded nurseries, and funding for free primary school breakfast clubs was tripled to £30m.
This positive investment follows welcome government decisions to scrap damaging single-phrase Ofsted judgements, abandon plans for an Advanced British Standard qualification, and approve an above-inflation 5.5% teacher pay award.
Schools are grappling with crises on several fronts, and the overall package falls far short of what they need – but we were not expecting the government to address more than a decade of neglect in one Budget.
What matters now is that this must be the beginning of sustained investment in schools over the Parliament, which must continue with the upcoming three-year Spending Review in the Spring.
SEND
Near the top of the queue for further funding must be the broken SEND system. Increased funding over the last decade was nowhere near enough to meet rising demand amid increases in the number of young people with Education Health and Care Plans. Annual per-pupil funding for special schools has remained frozen at £10,000 since 2013, despite record inflation. All schools face a postcode lottery in accessing additional funding for pupils with high needs from cash-strapped councils.
Both schools and local authorities have accumulated significant deficits in doing their best to offer appropriate support. The fear is that the extra £1bn earmarked for SEND will largely be used to reduce council deficits rather than boost pupil support.
Schools are also affected by shortages of specialist places and difficulties accessing support from experts like educational psychologists and speech and language therapists amid workforce shortages.
Reforms are needed, for instance, to ensure pupils with similar needs can access equitable and sufficient funding, irrespective of where they live or whether they attend a mainstream or special school. But such changes require funding to be effective and last year's SEND Improvement Plan failed to support proposed remedies like earlier intervention and increasing the specialist workforce with additional resources.
We are supporting the call by the F40 group of councils for an extra £4.6bn for high needs provision. We also want local authority high needs deficits – currently permitted to remain in place until March 2026 – to be cancelled to allow a full system reset.
School buildings
When it comes to the shocking state of many school buildings, the additional investment is again a start, but much more funding will be required. It is unacceptable that some school leaders are teaching children in buildings supported by poles, and in leaky portable cabins.
The rebuilding programme aims to support 518 schools over 10 years, but just 23 schools have reportedly benefitted since 2020 (see Shearing, 2024). The £1.4bn announced will only get the existing programme, itself not nearly ambitious enough, back on track. Funding for rebuilding and refurbishment was halved between 2010 and 2022, yet the National Audit Office last year said 24,000 school buildings (38% of the total) were beyond their initial life design. The rebuilding programme needs to be massively expanded to meet this urgent need.
Department for Education capital funding, used for everything from boiler replacements to roof repairs, also fell 46% in real terms from 2010 to 2023.
More than four-fifths (83%) of school leaders we surveyed earlier this year (NAHT, 2024a) said they lacked the funding needed to maintain their buildings. While welcome, the £2.1bn in the Budget for improving the school estate will not dramatically change this.
A long-term plan is needed to restore all school buildings to at least a “satisfactory” condition as soon as possible – a DfE survey in 2021 estimated this would cost £11.4bn. This must start with the oldest, most dilapidated buildings and those with structural risks including asbestos and RAAC (aka crumbly concrete).
Children and staff deserve schools that are safe and fit for purpose, and we need the government to make much more headway in delivering this in the Spring Spending Review.
Core funding
Per-pupil funding only this year returned to 2010 levels after years of real-terms cuts and schools continue to face impossible budget decisions.
Our funding survey (NAHT, 2024b) found that only 1% of school leaders felt they received enough funding to fully meet the needs of all pupils; 95% had needed to raise income from sources like charity grants and fundraising, while 55% worried they would have to cut teachers or teaching hours over the next three years.
Schools will receive an average of 1.4% real-terms increase in funding next year. Teachers will get a 5.5% pay rise, the first above inflation for years. In part, this will help recruit 6,500 teachers.
It is vital the government builds on this investment during this Parliament with consecutive real-terms pay rises for teachers and leaders to help tackle a crippling recruitment and retention crisis.
This is the legacy of more than a decade of below-inflation pay rises which have seen pay fall far behind other professions.
Meanwhile, the education secretary has pledged that the increase in employers’ National Insurance will be covered nationally for schools and it is essential that no individual schools bear this cost.
Final thoughts
Beginning to undo the damage done by more than a decade of squeezed funding will take time and requires further real-terms increases in core funding. As well as staffing, this money has to cover everything from classroom materials and school trips to routine maintenance and it rarely stretches far enough.
With pupil rolls continuing to fall over the next few years, the government should at least maintain overall education spending to help facilitate increased per-pupil funding.
With such stark funding challenges facing schools, it is important that the government is in it for the long haul when it comes to investing in children’s education.
- Paul Whiteman is general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers. Read his previous articles for SecEd via www.sec-ed.co.uk/authors/paul-whiteman
Further information & resources
- HM Treasury: Autumn Budget, 2024: www.gov.uk/government/publications/autumn-budget-2024
- NAHT: Schools falling into disrepair because of government funding failure, 2024a: www.naht.org.uk/News/Latest-comments/Press-room/ArtMID/558/ArticleID/2403/Schools-falling-into-disrepair-because-of-government-funding-failure
- NAHT: Schools going ‘cap in hand’ to communities amid funding squeeze warns NAHT, 2024b: www.naht.org.uk/News/Latest-comments/Press-room/ArtMID/558/ArticleID/2405/Schools-going-%e2%80%98cap-in-hand%e2%80%99-to-communities-amid-funding-squeeze-warns-NAHT
- Shearing: 'The lights go out when it rains' - hundreds of schools waiting on builders, BBC, 2024: www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0e1zlpxvw7o