'Our school has cut to the bone. Our teachers are on their knees'
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Version 0 of 1. When Justine Greening outlined plans for a new national funding formula for schools last December, she chose to illustrate the unfairness of the current system by comparing schools in the south Yorkshire town of Barnsley with those in Hackney in east London. Under this “unfair, untransparent and out of date system”, the education secretary said a school in Barnsley, one of the poorest-funded boroughs in the country, would receive 50% more money if it was simply transplanted wholesale from south Yorkshire to Hackney. It’s a comparison Jo Higgins, principal of Penistone grammar school, to the west of Barnsley, likes to repeat to illustrate the plight of her school after years of underfunding. “To say it’s a crisis is not overdramatising it. We have cut to the bone. Our staff are on their knees.” The long-awaited formula was presented as a solution to the inequities in the old funding system. But three months later, with the consultation on the proposed changes due to close next Wednesday, the government this week faces a nationwide revolt from teachers, parents, MPs (including many Tories) and local politicians, unhappy about the impact on their schools. There have been packed meetings in school halls across the country – from Barnsley to Hackney and beyond – where parents have expressed outrage at proposed cuts to their children’s education. While the new funding formula is designed to redistribute existing money more fairly, the backdrop to this national anxiety is what school leaders describe as the largest real-terms cut in school funding in a generation. Not even Penistone (with school motto “Never stop flying”), as one of the apparent winners in the redrafted formula, is happy with the outcome. Higgins says there will not be enough extra money available quickly enough to make any significant difference, because her school – like every other school in the country – is facing a real-terms budget cut, 8% on average according to the National Audit Office. Overall schools are being asked to find £3bn of savings by 2019-20. The Department for Education counters this by saying schools are receiving record levels of funding and quoting analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which shows that spending per pupil almost doubled in real terms between 1997 and 2016. But schools are still protesting and parents are increasingly unhappy. A visitor to Penistone, which abandoned its grammar school status decades ago and is now a local authority-maintained comprehensive, would never guess the difficulties the school is facing. The building is light and modern, with a glass atrium and a pleasing palette of colours; the school is rated “good” by Ofsted and results are impressive, with 82% of pupils getting five A*-C grades at GCSE including English and maths. Behind the smart facade, however, Higgins and her school governors have been grappling with a mounting deficit. This now stands at £300,000, despite repeated and extensive cuts. The school, which has 1,500 pupils, has lost 40 members of staff in four years; the learning support unit has been scrapped; class sizes have grown and courses have been axed, but still the deficit grows. The governors are now refusing to sign off any more cuts as they say it would be irresponsible, and a few weeks ago they decided they had no alternative but to go public. Higgins sent out letters to every parent and hosted a series of meetings for staff, parents and pupils to inform them about the school’s predicament. “It was actually quite emotional,” said Higgins. “Tears have been shed.” The detail of school funding is complex and arcane, with multiple factors affecting income including deprivation and prior attainment measures. But in terms of the basic funding entitlement which represents the bulk of the formula, pupils and parents at Penistone were shocked to discover that in Barnsley schools receive on average £3,661 per pupil per year, while 175 miles down the M1, schools in Hackney receive £7,291 per pupil – almost double – according to 2015/16 figures. “Someone somewhere please explain, how could that be seen as fair?” said parent and vice chair of governors Eugene Gallagher. “Everyone pays their taxes. The assumption is every child gets the same basic level of funding. When you explain to parents their child gets less, they go through the process of shock, disbelief and then they get angry.” Daisy Airstone, a 16-year-old prefect in year 11, was similarly shocked. “We didn’t realise it at all. But we found out we got nearly half the money that other schools do – because of where we live and where we’re from. I don’t feel like it’s fair.” Penistone is the most poorly funded school in Barnsley, and in the bottom 25 of the most poorly funded schools in the country. Under the new formula, the school appears to gain 10.7% in funding, with an extra £653,000 a year – but in reality it will gain just 2.7% in 2018/19 and 2.5% the year after because of the transitional protection for schools facing major losses. That, says Gallagher, will instantly be swallowed up by rising employment costs. There are no details on what happens after that. “I can’t see it’s going to make any difference to our school,” said Gallagher. “The longer that schools that have been advantageously funded are protected, it means we can’t get out of the hole we are in. We need more money and we need it now.” Under the proposed changes, if Penistone is to gain at all, schools such as the the Urswick Church of England secondary school in Hackney have to lose. Like Penistone, its 850 pupils inhabit a smart and shiny new building, but despite the gentrification of some parts of Hackney, the school serves a disadvantaged community. Some 70% of pupils qualify for a premium that targets extra money to tackle disadvantage, compared with 14% of pupils at Penistone; half are on free school meals and nine out of 10 are from ethnic minorities (pupils at Penistone are predominantly white British). Results were disappointing last year with 40% of pupils getting five A*-Cs at GCSE, but in 2014 the Urswick (school motto “Believe and achieve”) was named by the Department for Education as one of the most improved schools nationwide. On the face of it, the Urswick is among the best funded schools in the country. But according to headteacher Richard Brown his budget has not gone up in real terms in five years. Class sizes are getting bigger, support staff have been cut. Costs are higher – London teachers command higher wages because of the cost of living in the capital – and student need is greater. More than half speak English as an additional language and pupils join the school with levels of attainment much lower than the national average. Nevertheless when Brown sees the figures for basic entitlement funding for schools in Barnsley, compared with those in Hackney, he too is shocked. “Bloody hell,” he says. “You can’t run an education system on that. I do think there should be a levelling up, but not at our expense.” According to calculations by teachers’ unions, disputed by the government, the Urswick stands to lose almost £1,000 per pupil as a result of real-terms funding cuts and proposed national funding formula changes. “I’m perfectly for Barnsley or any other area receiving a greater level of funding, but not by money being taken out of this school – or out of disadvantaged inner city communities – because that’s what we are talking about,” said Brown. What’s at stake, he says, is improving social mobility – every year now a group of Urswick pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds go off to university. “Clearly a good level of funding creates the circumstances whereby these children can achieve,” said Brown. “It’s almost as if the government had set school against school, and local authority against local authority,” he went on. “We shouldn’t be playing that game. The truth is we are all going to be worse off. Some are just going to be worse off than others. “Money that could be pumped into funding schools more equally across the country is being used in a different way ... new money is being spent on grammar schools and free schools,” he said. “That’s a political choice – it’s not an economic choice that the government has made. Stop playing politics. We need more money in all schools.” |