Today, the School Cuts coalition launches a fully updated
interactive map of England’s schools. It shows that 83% of
schools will be worse off next year than they were in 2015.
Using the latest cash allocation figures, published by the
Department for Education on 11 October, we can now see precisely
how many schools will lose out.
Despite Boris Johnson’s boasts of “levelling up”, the truth is
stark:
- 16,523 schools will have cuts in April 2020 compared to 2015;
- The average cut per pupil is £245 for a primary pupil;
- The average cut per pupil is £304 for a secondary pupil.
The cuts to schools are deeply unfair.
In the primary schools serving the most deprived intakes, cuts
per pupil average £382 a year. But in the primary schools with
the least deprived intakes they average £125 a year.
Likewise, in the secondary schools serving the most deprived
intakes, cuts per pupil average £509 a year. But in the secondary
schools with the least deprived intakes they average £117 a year.
With today’s fully updated School Cuts website you can see
exactly how every school will be affected – using official data,
but without the gloss of Government spin.
Put in your postcode and find your school at https://schoolcuts.org.uk/
The methodology and analysis documents.
Jon Richards, head of education at
UNISON, said: “The overwhelming majority of schools
are now significantly poorer. New funds promised won’t make up
for money snatched from them in the past. Every day cash-strapped
schools are having to let valued support staff go. The
government’s school funding agency won’t bail out overspent
academies unless they slash their staff costs. With schools so
hard up, classrooms across the country are feeling the squeeze.”
Geoff Barton, General Secretary, Association of School
and College Lecturers, said: “We are not being churlish,
we are just stating the facts. The extra money for schools is not
enough to reverse the cuts and the funding crisis is not over. In
fact, many schools will have to make further cuts next year
because they are receiving only an inflationary increase and
school costs are rising above inflation. We need an uplift for
all schools which restores funding levels to where they were
before the cuts began to bite and which keeps pace with costs.”
Kevin Courtney, Joint General Secretary, National
Education Union, said: “Parents, teachers and school
leaders need no lectures on the impact of the school funding
crisis. And children who started school in 2015 will have seen no
relief by 2021 in 83% of schools – their whole school career has
been blighted. It is galling for everyone in the education
community that the Government continues to underfund and
under-deliver on their responsibility to the nation’s schools.”
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the National
Association of Head Teachers, said: “It is very clear
that there will still be winners and losers. One in three schools
will only receive an increase of around 1.8% in their overall
funding, which is still a real-terms cut. This shows that it will
take a lot more than the government is currently offering in
order to properly restore the funding that’s been lost over the
past several years. Children and their families have seen class
sizes soar, teaching assistants laid off, subjects dropped,
resources diminish, and in many cases witness their school fall
into disrepair, all because the ever-reducing budgets make it
harder and harder to make ends meet.”
