Commenting on the report of the House of Commons Committee of
Public Accounts, ‘Financial sustainability of schools in
England’, Geoff Barton, General Secretary of the Association of
School and College Leaders, said:
“It is not only the Public Accounts Committee that is frustrated
by the Department for Education’s blithe insistence that schools
have never had it so good. So are school leaders, who have to
live with the reality of severely straitened budgets.
“There are many and complex reasons why there is significant
variation in this financial picture and, to the DfE’s credit, it
is trying to address this situation through the application of a
National Funding Formula.
“The weakness, however, is that it is trying to improve the
settlement for schools which are historically poorly funded while
not having enough money in the pot to uplift the budgets for
other schools, often in deprived communities, by the same amount.
This has created a situation of winners and losers, with the
losers being schools which serve children who need the most
support. This is clearly inequitable.
“No school ever wants to curtail provision but there is a point
at which there simply is not enough money in the budget to afford
to deliver the full range of support that they want to provide.
Many school leaders have had to make very difficult choices about
where to cut back over the past few years. It is inevitable that
this affects staffing levels because this is the most significant
cost in a school, and this can affect the breadth of the
curriculum and the pastoral support they are able to provide.
Added to this is a complicated system of funding for special
educational needs support which is utterly dysfunctional and
which the DfE has, so far, taken more than two years to review.
“It is not surprising that some academy trusts have built up
relatively large reserves. Part of the rationale for the
formation of academy trusts is to make groups of schools
responsible for thinking strategically about future needs. So,
for example, they may decide to build up reserves for capital
projects which will benefit their pupils. It is perfectly
reasonable for the Public Accounts Committee to ask the DfE for
more information about the purpose of reserves. However, it is
frustrating that the DfE has apparently neglected to gather this
information despite the endless barrage of requests for financial
information which it already asks academy trusts to provide.
“What should be clear from all of this is that the school system
in England continues to operate under considerable financial
pressure. To make matters worse, the post-16 sector is in an even
worse state with more than a decade of severe underfunding from
the government. None of this is good enough for the children and
young people who our schools and colleges are trying so hard to
support day in and day out.”
