I’m going to begin by doing something I wouldn’t normally do, which is to approvingly quote something Rishi Sunak has said.
In his speech launching the unwanted Advanced British Standard in October last year, he said: “Education is the closest thing we have to a silver bullet – it is the best economic policy, the best social policy and the best moral policy.”
I couldn’t agree more. The problem is that ever since, he hasn’t put his money where his mouth is.
By the time of the Autumn Statement on November 22, you would have been forgiven for wondering if it was even the same administration in charge – understandable given the revolving door of prime ministers we have been subjected to.
But no, same PM. Same chancellor. And this was the same old Conservative Party. They promised no new money for education. Not even existing money shunted around the system and passed off as new. There was a big fat zero for schools in the Autumn Statement.
Well, readers, they did it again in this month’s Spring Budget. Notwithstanding the inadequate investment of £105m for new special free schools, the chancellor plans to cut capital investment in education from £6.3bn this year to £6.1bn next.
Mr Sunak and Mr Hunt ignored the real-terms cuts which have seen 70% of schools worse off than they were in 2010 as our renewed School Cuts campaign and website has revealed (see further information). They ignored booming class sizes and buildings on the verge of collapse.
They also ignored the sky-high workload and recruitment and retention crisis. The TUC’s recent Work Your Proper Hours Day showed that teachers top the polls for unpaid overtime hours.
Even the Department for Education’s (DfE) own workload survey shows full-time leaders working an average 58.2 hours per week and full-time teachers 52.4 hours per week. Both are above the UK’s Working Time Regulations and extend well beyond classroom hours.
Is it any wonder teachers are leaving? Is it any wonder the government misses its teacher training targets year-on-year? And that remains the case even after they lowered them.
The government did provide £105m in the Spring Budget but this is ringfenced for the creation of a small number of specialist schools. The existing 25,000 schools got nothing whatsoever.
This is a spent government. They have no ideas for tackling the challenges facing education and give no hint of wanting to do so.
That is two “fiscal events” where schools and colleges were essentially ignored. And we now have a submission by the DfE to the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) which leaves us in no doubt that they intend to offer a small, paltry increase to teacher pay for 2024/25.
Education secretary Gillian Keegan is more concerned about limiting the independence of the STRB than she is in fixing the crisis in recruitment and retention.
Schools and colleges have to deal with the consequences of government policy – whether that be their own pay and conditions, or the government cutting local authority spending power in real-terms by 27% (according to figures from the Local Government Association) since 2010 and the impact this has on support services for schools.
All that the chancellor promised the public sector was greater “productivity”, which of course means doing more and more with less and less.
Nor does the government have any strategy to close the disadvantage gap. Child poverty has grown on their watch.
With soaring inflation, teachers have experienced 25% of pay cuts in real terms over 14 years. In that context, Jeremy Hunt’s proposed National Insurance cut amounts to very little. Very few teachers will think the chancellor has done them a favour.
This is a clear pattern of behaviour which is highly revealing of the government’s attitude. There is precious little light at the end of the tunnel. And it’s why, this month, the NEU is asking members to let us know their strength of feeling.
The NEU's preliminary ballot of teacher members in England has opened. It calls for a fully funded above-inflation pay increase, as well as funding to pay for additional staffing – and asks if members are willing to take industrial action with that aim in mind.
Strike action is a last resort, but it will be an option our members will seriously consider in the face of a government so uninterested in education.
- Daniel Kebede is general secretary of the National Education Union. Read his previous articles for Headteacher Update via www.headteacher-update.com/authors/daniel-kebede
Further information & resources
- NEU: Updated School Cuts data, 2024: https://neu.org.uk/latest/press-releases/updated-school-cuts-data