Essex headteacher urges government to raise school budgets
Underfunding and rising costs may lead to teacher redundancies
Last updated 9th Nov 2022
A headteacher from Essex has urged the Government to raise schools’ budgets.
It comes as new research shows more than half of schools in England are looking at potential staff redundancies to cope with rising costs and limited budgets.
A survey of headteachers found half are looking at cutting teachers, and two-thirds say they'll have to reduce the number of teaching assistants.
Rebecca Leek, a headteacher in Essex, says that staff cuts are inevitable with the current budget.
She said: “We can all be very entrepreneurial and rent out our school hall a little bit more, but the greatest cost is people. Generally, 80% of our budgets are put towards wages, and so that’s where we will look.
“If we are going to put together a balanced budget, where we don’t go into deficit, then we have to have fewer staff working in our schools, probably.”
Rebecca adds that children will not be served properly if the Government does not increase schools’ funding: “I’m a teacher and I believe in excellent education. We must receive enough money to run excellent schools, so that children do well and society improves”.
The survey’s findings, released on Tuesday, said 54% of school leaders say they will go into deficit this year if they do not make further cuts.
Rebecca says that underfunding is a long-term issue as schools often have to offer temporary teaching jobs because of the uncertainty around funding.
She said: “Sadly, we have to be cautious about offering permanent contracts because we don’t know whether the funding is secured from one year to the next.”
Rebecca also told us that, most recently, the main problem with schools’ budgets is the imposed wage increases.
“The wage increases are a good thing because we must pay people enough. But we cannot receive a set amount of money and have certain pay scales imposed upon us. We have to make those two things fit and they quite literally cannot,” she said.
“If the wages increase for our staff, as well as energy prices, and if we continue to not receive increased funding, we have to save money.”
The poll carried out by the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT), which surveyed more than 11,000 school leaders, also showed that two thirds of headteachers will have to make teaching assistants redundant or reduce their hours.
Rebecca says that is not the right way to trim the costs of a school. She believes teaching assistants are invaluable to the primary school system.
She said: “Having fewer adults in a classroom means there will be less offer for children. One adult for 30 pupils is tough!”