Billions of pounds for schools – so read the headlines following the Autumn Budget on October 30. It sounds like great news, but what does it actually mean for your school?
The Budget, of course, deals in very big figures. But when that money is stretched across a large system – nine million pupils, 24,000 schools – it is a lot thinner than the impression which may be given by those headlines.
So, the good news is qualified. The Treasury calculates that the funding it is providing in 2025/26 will allow for a real-terms increase in school allocations. But this is an average across all schools, and we don’t yet know what it will mean individually.
What we do know is that school budgets are under intense pressure – with many in deficit – and that school costs tend to rise at a higher rate than inflation. This money then is helpful, but it is unlikely to fix the funding crisis, and many schools will continue to face significant challenges.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves also announced an increase of £1bn for SEND and alternative provision funding. This also sounds like great news given the huge pressure on SEND provision. However, the small print reveals that the Treasury thinks it very likely that most of this money – £865m – will be used by local authorities to reduce their high needs deficits.
Once again, the picture is more complicated, and less satisfactory, than it might at first seem.
Those deficits are caused by years of underfunding of the SEND system, and they do need sorting out. We would like to see that happen by an injection of funding – outside of the education budget – to write them off in their entirety. That way we could be sure that money announced for SEND actually goes to helping children.
And then there is the issue of crumbling school buildings. Sure enough, the Budget contains extra money for capital investment which includes funding to keep the school rebuilding programme on track and for general maintenance of the school estate.
This is obviously welcome, but the school rebuilding programme is not exactly the most ambitious of projects. It amounts to around 500 rebuilds over 10 years. The National Audit Office has already reported that about 24,000 school buildings (38% of the total) are beyond their design life. So, it is clear that much more action is going to be needed in the future.
There is also more money in the Budget for further education, but again this doesn’t seem to be anywhere near enough to ease the pressures on a sector which has been so badly treated over the past 14 years.
All of this sounds like I’m grumbling when I’m really not. We had Budgets under the previous government where education was scarcely mentioned at all. This is a vast improvement by a new government which is clearly trying to fix the problems. Its difficulty is that there are so many problems to fix, and the national finances are so tight.
It sees this Budget as a first step in a longer term plan for public services. It is intended to address immediate needs and will be followed by “phase 2” in the spring where the government will set out its vision beyond 2026.
Of course, what will matter to schools and colleges is how this all translates to what you see on the ground in your context.
That means being able to afford all the things that are important to your students – a broad and rich curriculum, excellent pastoral and learning support, high-quality SEND provision, school trips and classroom resources.
It means being able to replace outdated buildings that constantly need patching up with facilities that are fit for the 21st century – learning environments that are safe, comfortable and conducive to learning.
And it means being able to recruit and retain the teachers, classroom assistants and support staff that schools and colleges need to make everything else possible, and close attainment gaps for the most disadvantaged students.
These are the things that will ultimately be the test of how the new government deals with the multiple crises facing the education system. And that is a test which children and young people desperately need it to pass.
- Pepe Di’Iasio is the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders. Read his previous articles for Headteacher update via www.headteacher-update.com/authors/pepe-di-iasio/
Further information & resources
HM Treasury: Autumn Budget, 2024: www.gov.uk/government/publications/autumn-budget-2024