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The government is full of rhetoric but has still presided over chronic underfunding of education. We might remember this at the next General Election, says Geoff Barton


Welcome back to the start of another school year, which promises to bring the all-to-familiar blend of good and bad.

The good, of course, being the enjoyment of getting to know new classes and seeing them progress and excel.

The bad being the irritants of never having enough time, or resources, and the ever-looming spectre of Ofsted inspections and performance tables.

Sorry, to dampen the mood so quickly!

Unfortunately, the bad bits are likely to get worse because of the pressure on school and college budgets caused by huge increases to energy bills and the cost of pay awards for which there is no additional funding from the government.

Added to this are often-severe difficulties in recruiting enough teachers and support staff. Schools and colleges, as they always do, will be trying their best to minimise the impact on their pupils, but it does seem increasingly inevitable that there will be another round of cutbacks unless the government can be persuaded to help by providing more funding.

The government’s current view is that the increases in costs are “broadly affordable”, which ignores the fact that funding allocations and financial circumstances vary widely, and that many schools and colleges will not remotely be able to afford such huge extra bills.

Such are the cost pressures that the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), a widely respected economic think-tank, has concluded that the government is no longer on track to deliver on its objective of restoring school per-pupil funding to 2010 levels in real-terms by the end of this Parliament in 2024/25.

Instead, it projects that schools will still be 3% worse off than they were 15 years ago (Sibieta, 2022; also see our report here).

The IFS analysis says the costs faced by schools look just about affordable this academic year (2022/23), but beyond this year schools will once again be facing real-terms cuts.

However, it must be emphasised that the IFS figures are averages and many schools will be facing real-terms funding cuts and deficit budgets this year.

What we have actually seen over this past decade or so is a 9% real-terms cuts in funding (between 2010 and 2019), as verified by the IFS, followed by an improvement in government investment in a welcome but belated attempt to turn round that appalling record.

Now we face what looks very much like a new funding crisis that will plunge schools back into the red.

The situation in post-16 education is even worse. Back in November last year, the IFS estimated that per-student funding in colleges will be around 10% below 2010 levels in real-terms by the end of this Parliament, and school sixth form funding will be 23% lower (Farquharson et al, 2021).

It is a terrible reflection on the government’s priorities that since 2010 it has presided over this chronic underfunding of schools and colleges – of education.

Simultaneously, politicians have issued endless reams of rhetoric about how they are championing “rigour” and “standards” and how they are leading a revolution in technical education.

The government’s recent White Paper (DfE, 2022) proudly trumpets new literacy and numeracy targets without the slightest recognition that to achieve these would require a massive injection of extra resources to provide more support to children with SEN and those from disadvantaged backgrounds (SecEd, 2022).

It is the very definition of talk being cheap.

A successful education system is not all about money, of course. It is also about how we shape our qualifications, curriculum, accountability system, and how we organise schools and education structurally.

But – leaving aside the fact that the government has made a pig’s ear of most of its incursions into these things too – a lot is actually reliant on money.

There are some 8.4 million children in England’s schools from a wide range of backgrounds. Schools need to be able to afford enough teachers and support staff to provide all these children with a well-taught curriculum that is rich and broad, and to provide pastoral and individual support to the many children who need this crucial extra help.

And they need enough money to buy classroom resources, and sports equipment, to pay for heating, lighting and food, to maintain buildings, recreation grounds and playing fields, to hire supply staff and provide effective professional development, to pay for exam fees, and so on and so forth.

Education is a mass industry. And when there is a funding deficit – as there has been for much of the past decade and as it looks likely there will be for at least the next two or three years – a lot of the nuts and bolts mentioned above are inevitably in jeopardy.

So, the single most pressing task for those of us who represent the education sector and those working within it is to set out to the government in forensic and compelling detail the impact of cost pressures on schools and colleges, and the likely consequences for educational provision if there is no additional funding.

You – the people who work in education – and the children, families and communities you serve need us to make that case well and you need the government to listen.

We will do our very best on the first count, and if the second doesn’t happen and the government doesn’t listen, that will be worth bearing in mind at the next General Election.

  • Geoff Barton is general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders. Read his previous
    articles for SecEd via     http://bit.ly/seced-barton


Further information & resources

SecEd Autumn Edition 2022: This article first appeared in SecEd's Autumn Edition 2022. This edition was sent free of charge to every secondary school in the country. A digital edition will be available shortly via www.sec-ed.co.uk/digital-editions/