Headteachers have warned they face having to choose between levels of staffing and heating to cope with budget cuts of an estimated 10% over four years.
David Cameron’s announcement this week that state school spending for four- to 16-year-olds in England would remain frozen at 2010 levels was met with dismay by heads who have already shed staff and seen deep cuts in support services and local authority backing in recent years.
But worse is to come, according to school leaders across England to whom the Guardian spoke. Many are already calculating what corners they can cut in order to keep teachers in classrooms.
Tony Draper, headteacher at Water Hall primary in Milton Keynes, which has more than 300 pupils, said that small primaries with few additional resources were likely to be among the hardest hit – while struggling to meet increased demand resulting from the recent baby boom.
He said: “Schools may have to cut down on energy costs to fund staff salaries as well. Essentially what will have to happen is schools will have to rob Peter to pay Paul. It will come to a point where they will have to make staff redundant and they will have to increase class sizes.”
Julie Nash, headteacher of Cape Cornwall school, a small secondary comprehensive in Saint Just, Cornwall, said: “All our staff costs are increasing in real terms. Everything we buy, costs have increased. And yet the funding per pupil is remaining the same. So on an already very stretched budget, you’re going to see more and more schools looking at a deficit budget.
“We’re looking at alternative funding streams. What ways can we start to really save money on everything else we do apart from staffing? How can we join with other schools to buy paper? It’s getting like that – saving money on paperclips. That isn’t going to help much but it helps a bit.”
Cameron’s announcement that school spending would remain ringfenced came as a small relief. But in real terms, inflation will eat away the value of the level set in 2010, and schools face extra costs later this year because of pay and pensions changes.
Sam Freedman, a former policy adviser to the Department for Education, estimated that inflation and tax increases combined would amount to real-terms cuts of more than 10% by the end of the next parliament in 2020.
Micon Metcalfe, the director of finance and business at Dunraven academy, a combined primary and secondary in London, said all schools faced big increases in their wage bills this year, as a result of the increased national insurance employers’ contribution, and a further 2% rise because of a government-mandated increase in teacher pension contributions.
In addition to that staff will receive a cost of living increase, as well as regular increases for seniority, promotion and performance. “Typically a school will be spending 75-80% on salaries. If you’re running a deficit, all you can do is try and reduce your wages bill, so that means cutting staff costs,” Metcalfe said.
She said that Dunraven was fortunate to have a financial cushion, but the worst affected would be those with no reserves to fall back on.
“There will be schools that will get into financial difficulties. I can’t see how it can be avoided. If you’ve got no reserves and you can’t set a balanced budget, and you’re not going to have the cash coming through, you’re not going to be able to pay your wages,” she said.
“There have been one or two academies who have already had emergency payments [from the Department for Education], literally to pay their salary bills.”
But Metcalfe warned: “It’s beyond saving 50p on your photocopying paper. For schools running a deficit the only way to get back to a balanced budget is to reduce staffing as this is such a large part of overall expenditure.”
One head, of a state secondary in the west Midlands said: “It’s got to the point where it’s stopping me getting to sleep at night. We’ve gone over and over the budgets and I can’t see how we are going to hang on to the staff we have now, or teach the subjects that we do now.
“It sounds strange but I’m actually hoping that some [staff] will leave at the end of the year – that way I won’t have to replace them and we’ll do it that way, and I won’t have to make them redundant,” said the head, who did not want to be identified.
Russell Hobby, head of the National Association of Head Teachers, said it was impossible to estimate the size of redundancies that schools were facing in the next two years. “I’m sure that every head will look at every possible saving before funding the redundancy issue. It would be a last resort but at some point you can’t make the savings without it,” Hobby said.
“Schools can consolidate teaching, reduce the programme of study they offer, increase class sizes – but they all have an impact on quality.”
Tristram Hunt, shadow education secretary, is likely to make an announcement on Labour’s funding plans in the coming days.
“David Cameron has been forced to admit that his plans will see a real-terms cut to spending on schools. The truth is that you can’t protect schools when you have plans to take spending as a share of GDP back to levels not seen since the 1930s,” Hunt said.
Hobby said the school funding dilemma was unlikely to change no matter who won May’s general election: “I think the hands of the next government are firmly tied. We’re talking about variations on a theme. What we need is clarity from all the parties, because head teachers need to plan ahead.”
