‘Not enough money’: secondary school heads warn MPs of budget woes

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Secondary school heads across England are warning MPs of cuts to mental health provision, school trips and essential building repairs because rising costs and energy bills are wrecking their budgets.

Ahead of the government’s autumn statement on 17 November, headteachers are telling local MPs and councillors about their struggles to adjust their budgets to cover unexpected costs of hundreds of thousands of pounds in higher pay and bills.

The Westminster secondary schools improvement collaborative – which represents 12 state schools in the London borough of Westminster – has written to MPs warning of “a funding crisis which will seriously impede our ability to provide for our students and their families”.

The school leaders say the higher staff pay increase alone announced by the Department for Education (DfE) is costing one school, Westminster City, an additional ?145,000 from its budget for this year, forcing it to delay essential repairs to the school’s science block.

The group of schools said areas such as mental health support for pupils as well as extracurricular activities such as clubs and trips, careers advice and extra help for struggling students “would be limited or cut altogether as a result of reduced funding”.

Kat Pugh, the headteacher at St Marylebone Church of England school and a signatory to the letter, said her school had budgeted for additional mental health counselling and mentoring for pupils.

“But now we can’t do that. We can’t afford it,” she said. “It would have been great to have more counselling, it would have been great for students to have more careers advice. But we are having to cut back to the bare minimum.”

Meanwhile, MPs in Worcestershire have been warned by a consortium of 32 schools in the county that they face staff cuts, reduced spending on maintenance and budget deficits.

The letter from the Worcestershire Association of Secondary Headteachers asks MPs for “an immediate increase to school funding to cover the unfunded extra staff costs”, as well as a commitment that future pay rises will be fully funded, and a plan to compensate schools for higher energy bills next year.

Schools are operating on budgets set before the sudden rise in energy costs and the DfE’s late decision to increase teacher pay by about 5% rather than the 3% previously announced.

Bryn Thomas, headteacher of Wolverley C of E secondary school near Kidderminster, said his school had an annual budget of about ?6m, of which just over ?5m went on staffing.

“Out of the ?900,000 left to run the school, I’ve got to find ?150,000 to ?200,000 [for higher pay], and on top of that energy bills are going up, and we have to pay for inflation on everything else,” Thomas said.

“It’s not a case of just not buying any new books. There just isn’t enough money.”

Thomas said that despite the funding pressure, pay needed to improve to stop teachers leaving the profession. He said that some teachers were taking second jobs as pizza deliverers to make ends meet.

The DfE said schools in England were being supported with an extra ?4bn this year, taking core funding to ?53.8bn. It said all schools will benefit from the government’s energy relief scheme, capping how much they need to spend on energy and giving them greater certainty.

However, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has forecast that the government will not meet its promise to raise spending on schools back to 2010 levels – with spending now expected to be lower in real terms by 2024.