FUN0030

Written evidence submitted on behalf of Fair Funding for All Schools

Introduction

1. Fair Funding for All Schools is a national network of parents from schools all over England, that want the government to listen to our concerns about the funding situation facing state schools across the country.

2. Since starting the campaign in December 2016, we have built a network of over 55 local campaign groups and have over 50k supporters.

3. In responding to the select committee inquiry on school and college funding, we will focus on the first of the four terms of reference only.

What should the Department for Education’s priorities be for the next Spending Review period as they relate to schools and colleges?

4. The government’s key priorities in terms of the Spending Review should be to ensure that every state school in the country receives sufficient funding to:

1. provide a rounded and fulfilling education for every pupil

2. make up for the real terms cuts in funding experienced over the last three years

3. address historical imbalances between schools in different parts of the country

4. ensure that all school budgets keep pace with inflationary cost pressures going forward

5. meet the specific needs of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds and those with special educational needs

School funding over the current Spending Review period

5. Despite the government’s claims of record funding levels for schools, since 2015 funding has failed to keep pace with inflation, pupil numbers and additional cost pressures facing schools.

6. In their Comparison of manifesto proposals on school spending in England, the Institute of Fiscal Studies states that:

7. “The Conservatives have committed to “increase the overall schools budget by £4 billion by 2022”. Once you strip out inflation, this equates to a real-terms increase in the schools budget of around £1 billion compared with the level in 2017–18. Taking account of forecast growth in pupil numbers this equates to a real-terms cut in spending per pupil of 2.8% between 2017–18 and 2021–22.”[1]

8. This comes on the back of two years of previous real-terms cuts to per pupil funding in the order of £2.8bn since 2015 – that is the total spending that schools would have received in the period 2015 – 2017 had funding been increased in line with inflation and the growth in pupil numbers.

9. So in total, from 2015 to 2022, the IFS states that this is “a total real-terms cut to per-pupil spending of around 7% over the six years between 2015–16 and 2021–22.”[2]

10. In July 2017, then Secretary of State for Education, Justine Greening, announced a funding package of £1.3bn over the two years covering 2018/19 and 2019/20. This money was taken from other parts of the Department for Education budget.

11. While this funding injection means that per pupil funding is effectively frozen – i.e. there are no further cuts to be made – over that two-year period, this is nowhere near enough to plug the funding gaps in our schools.

12. The IFS say that even with this money, school budgets are still being cut by 4.6 per cent from 2015 to 2020. [3] July’s announcement was a move in the right direction – and an admission by the government that we have a funding problem – but it is not enough.

13. Schools are facing significant cost increases - pay rises, the introduction of the National Living Wage, higher contributions to National Insurance and the teacher pension scheme, non-pay inflation and the Apprenticeship Levy. None of these cost increases are wasteful or unjustified but they do entail significant additional costs for schools.

14. In its report of December 2016, the NAO says that these cost pressures will force schools to find £3bn – equating to an 8 per cent real terms reduction per year in pupil funding by 2020[4]. This figure will have reduced marginally as a result of the extra money announced in July 2017 but, as we note above, the IFS has shown that this still equates to cuts a 4.6 per cent from 2015 to 2020.   Schools have not experienced this level of reduction in spending power since the mid-1990s.

15. In addition to real terms reductions in schools funding we are also seeing up to £800m cut from the Education Services Grant, which funds school improvement, management of school buildings and tackling non-attendance between 2015 and 2020, over a third cut from capital spending on schools and colleges since 2010/11, and a further eight per cent real terms reduction in 16-19 funding from 2015/16 to 2019/20.[5]

The impact on our schools – the national picture

16. These funding pressures are having very real consequences for children’s education. The real terms cuts to funding outlined above have resulted in large gaps in school budgets that have forced schools to increase class sizes, restrict curriculum choice, cut back on essential resources, support for vulnerable and high needs pupils and lose teaching and support staff.

17. In March 2017 the NUT and ATL surveyed their members on funding cuts in their schools, as already experienced and expected. The findings showed:

1. 76 per cent of respondents said their school had already experienced a budget cut for 2016-17.  Only 4 per cent were able to say that their school’s budget had increased - in almost all cases due to rising pupil numbers.

2. Half of all respondents reported that class sizes had risen since last year.

3. Half reported that teaching posts had already been cut and almost two thirds reported that classroom support staff posts had been cut – with further staffing cuts expected next year.

4. Almost three quarters reported cuts in spending on books and equipment.

5. Almost half reported cuts in special educational needs provision.

6. One in six reported that their school had been driven to ask parents for financial contributions to help with funding.

18. Research from February 2018 shows that staff numbers in secondary schools have fallen by 15,000 between 2014/15 and 2016/17 despite having 4,500 more pupils to teach. This equates to an average loss of 5.5 staff members in each school since 2015; in practical terms this means 2.4 fewer classroom teachers, 1.6 fewer teaching assistants and 1.5 fewer support staff.[6]

19. It is clear that every state school in the country is facing a worsening financial situation. The number of Secondary schools spending more than their income doubled to over 60 per cent in the last five years. The government expects schools to find over half of the required efficiency savings through cutting staff costs. The NAO reports that spending on teaching staff fell from 56 per cent to 51 per cent from 2010 to 2015 in maintained schools and from 55 per cent to 52 per cent in academies over the same period. 

20. The National Association of Head Teachers stated that in 2017:

Parents will start to see staff being let go this year. They will see bigger class sizes, fewer subjects on offer. They will see the person looking after special education needs go, and all those other additional services disappear.

21. The National Governors Association state that:

Funding is now the biggest concern for governing boards across the country. Unless there is urgent reform an increasing number of schools will be unable to balance their budgets in 2017 without significant staffing reductions which will affect the quality of education provided to pupils.

22. The latest schools census shows that last year there were almost 21,000 state secondary pupils and over 38,000 primary pupils taught in classes with 36 or more pupils – the highest numbers for over a decade. The days of large classes are returning.

23. Schools facing increasingly difficult financial positions have turned to asking parents for termly cash payments to supplement core school budgets. According to a survey by the NASUWT, 18% of parents have been asked to sign up for direct debits or standing orders for their children's school, typically of about £50 per year. But more than one in 20 parents with children in state schools were paying £400 or above. A further 13% of parents had been asked to make donations in cash or cheques.[7] In another survey, the Parent Teacher Association UK found that 4 in 10 parents were being asked to make regular financial contributions to schools.[8]

24. We recognise that parental contributions have always been a part of school culture. But we are concerned about the significant growth in requests for funding, the increasing use of systemic contributions such as direct debits and the use of funding to pay for classroom essentials.

The impact on our schools – the local picture

25. As a national network of parents, we see the impact on our local schools across the country. Member in all of our 55 groups around England have shown us evidence of impacts in their schools as a result of funding pressures.

26. The box below from a popular and successful secondary school in a London borough shows a typical notification sent to parents.

27. Parents involved in our Fair Funding for All Schools network and in the Save Our Schools campaign have undertaken local surveys of schools in their local areas. The table below shows the results of three such surveys undertaken, demonstrating the impact on local schools reported by those responding to the survey.

28. Some of the comments received from schools in these three areas as part of the survey include:

1. “Absolutely the worst thing I’ve had to do as a headteacher. We are now running on the barest minimum staffing”

2. “Heads are working 16 hour days as they don’t have the staff to delegate to. It is a perfect storm waiting to burst”

3. “Stressed teachers mean more stressed children which means poorer behaviour and lower academic results”

4. “We do not have any further capacity for cuts in staff numbers at any level of the organisation”

5. “Schools are concerned mental health issues will increase as needs are unmet due to large class sizes and lack of classroom support”

6. “All resource budgets have been cut this year”

7. “I cannot cut anything else”

29. Parents in Cumbria have pointed to:

1. Secondary schools being forced to cut vocational courses due to lack of funding. These courses are particularly vital in rural areas where employment choices are limited.

2. Head-teacher at a small rural primary school having to cut breakfast clubs, and maintenance staff. Head-teachers now taking on these roles themselves.

3. Reduction in teacher contact for A-level students.

4. Reduction in A-level choices.

The impact on pupils with special needs

30. The National Association of Headteachers (NAHT) has pointed to an increasing crisis in high needs funding. Their members and local authorities are reporting cuts to top up funding levels in both mainstream and special schools, local authority high needs budgets in deficit in the current year (leading to some authorities top slicing school budgets to plug the gap) and local authorities increasingly looking to shift funds from the School Block to high needs funding.

31. This crisis is a combination of the real terms cuts to school budgets, increasing cost inflation that schools face and growing demand within mainstream and specialist schools – there have been significant increases in pupils with statements or Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) with a 21 per cent increase between 2014 and 2017.[9]

Evidence from parents in Cumbria shows what this means for pupils:

What will be the impact of the National Funding Formula?

32. In April 2018 the government will be introducing a National Funding Formula – the aim of which is to ensure more transparent and equal funding for pupils across all schools in England, addressing historical imbalances.

33. In September 2017, the government set out how the new National Funding Formula will work.

34. Under the National Funding Formula:

1. In the two years covering 2018/19 and 2019/20, all schools will receive per pupil increases of 1 per cent – ensuring no school loses per pupil funding in cash terms over this two year period.

2. A minimum per pupil funding of £3.5k for Primaries and £4.8k for Secondaries will be introduced – helping the very lowest funded schools.

3. All gains through the Funding Formula (other than the pupil minimums above) will be capped at 6 per cent over the two year period.

4. There is no information about how this will be managed beyond 2020.

35. What this means:

1. As the IFS has pointed out, the total schools budget will be going down in real terms by 4.6 per cent between 2015 and 2020 – as funding fails to keep up with increasing costs.

2. This means that over that five year period, 88 per cent of schools will still see real terms cuts to their funding.

3. Because there is insufficient money in the system, the use of caps on the amount that schools can gain through the National Funding Formula means that schools in historically under-funded areas will not be making sufficient gains to catch up with other schools – those inequalities will remain.

What we want to see

36. We want fair funding for all schools, but it should not come from levelling down school spending in an already impossibly tight situation. Shifting money between schools while the entire budget is shrinking is doing no-one any favours.

37. Cuts are happening already. So we need the government to undo the damage that has already been done. We need funding in place to immediately remedy the cuts that have taken place over the last two years.

38. But we also want to see investment in our schools. We want per pupil funding to be protected in real-terms going forward, with funding keeping pace with increasing cost inflation in our schools.

39. We need investment in schools in poorly funded areas that gives them the money they need to provide a proper education for their pupils, without taking money away from others.

40. We want funding that allows schools to deal with the additional costs placed on them, without losing staff, without increasing class sizes, without cutting subjects and activities, without reducing support services and without calling on parents to fund core budgets.

41. And fundamentally we need the Department for Education to identify a true cost measure for what it takes to provide the kind of rounded and fulfilling school experience for our children. This could be informed by a national consultation involving parents, governors, teaching unions, school leaders and other key stakeholders in our communities.

May 2018