Best Practice

School funding: Teaching assistants in the firing line…

Despite the £2bn funding injection, schools still face tough decisions when balancing the books – and teaching assistants are prime targets. Suzanne O’Connell on why we might regret letting our TAs go...

 

During the coming spring term, many school business managers and school leaders will be grappling with the hard realities of a budget that simply won’t balance.

The Autumn Statement confirmed an additional £2bn will be allocated to the core school budgets in each of the next two funding years, starting April 2023. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says this will restore school spending to 2010 levels in real terms (for a full analysis of the implications for schools, see Headteacher Update, 2022).

And yet whatever politicians claim they are providing to schools, rising costs thanks to soaring inflation, soaring energy bills, and increasing demands on school resources mean many schools are not yet out of the woods.

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