It was Oscar Wilde who said some people “know the price of everything and the value of nothing”.

He was talking of cynics. But I was reminded of his pithy phrase when I listened to the chancellor delivering his Budget this week.

Because, as we’ve said before, Budgets aren’t simple spreadsheets. They’re an indication of what matters to the government, where its priorities lie - and, crucially, of what doesn’t matter.

So in Wednesday’s Budget, as Sam Freedman - former special adviser to Michael Gove - noted archly, the chancellor spent more time talking about the cost of Prosecco than he did about education. Values, indeed.

The Budget and school funding: choreographed PR

In the old days, of course, Budgets were announced by the chancellor on the day of the Budget.

These days, they are deliberately trickled out in the media in the days preceding the Budget, in a carefully choreographed public relations exercise, before any remaining rabbits are then pulled from hats on Budget day itself.

That is presumably how we ended up with a series of pre-announcements about money for T levels and special educational needs places, but a worrying void over the issue of education recovery funding, which was then compounded by chancellor Rishi Sunak seeming to dampen expectations ahead of the Budget.

On Sunday, he told Times Radio that the government has already “maxed out” on programmes such as catch-up tutoring and that there was not enough evidence for extending the school day - none of which sounded like good news for those hoping for more recovery funding.

But on Wednesday - hey presto! - it turned out that there is, in fact, an extra £1 billion in the pipeline for schools to support disadvantaged pupils, and £800 million for 16- to 19-year-olds.

Covid catch-up cash falls a long way short

I suppose the idea was to lower expectations so the actual announcement was met with a degree of relief.

That is despite the fact that it is a long way short of the £15 billion reportedly proposed by former education recovery commissioner Sir Kevan Collins, or the relatively modest £5.8 billion plan we put forward with other organisations and trusts in August.

In fact, the government has clearly listened to that latter plan because elements of what was proposed appear in the Budget announcement.

For example, there’s an increase in the hourly rate to be paid to early years providers, and the £1 billion for schools is via a recovery premium to support the most disadvantaged pupils.

The disappointing bit is that the overall level of funding is just too small. On the schools element, our plan envisaged £1.2 billion per year for three years.

Most at risk

We can all argue about what constitutes enough money, of course.

But the rationale of our proposal was well-founded. It pointed out that even before Covid, children with a high persistence of poverty had a learning gap of 22.7 months, and that it is these pupils whose futures have been put most at risk by the pandemic.

The level of funding we suggested would give each of these pupils significant support over a sustained period - enough we hoped to reverse the impact of the pandemic, narrow that attainment gap and improve their life chances.

There will still be a huge focus on these young people, of course, and schools will work incredibly hard to support them, as they always do. But more money does buy more support. It is as simple as that.

The Education Policy Institute calculates that the Westminster government’s commitment to funding education recovery amounts to £490 per pupil in England. That compares with education catch-up plans in the United States of around £1,800 per pupil and in the Netherlands of around £2,100 per pupil.

Parents here might rightly ask why children in England appear to be valued so much less than in those other countries.

So, whatever way you look at it, and without wanting to be churlish, the outcome of the Budget on education recovery is deeply disappointing.

The government could and should have done better.

£30,000 starting salaries for teachers

The other rabbit-from-the-hat moment was the chancellor’s flourish about school funding being restored to 2010 levels in real terms by 2025, which is obviously good news. However, and again without wishing to seem churlish, that still represents no growth in school funding for 15 years.

Instead, there’s been a process of cutting school funding, then slowly picking it up again to finally arrive at the same starting point. There are significant problems that need remedying in education, and that actually require more money.

For example, the aforementioned educational attainment gap and the ongoing crisis in funding for children with special educational needs.

It also seems that the government intends that the extra money for schools will cover the increase in teacher starting salaries to £30,000, which is likely to represent a huge chunk of that additional cash.

The increase in starting salaries is definitely the right policy as we need to recruit and retain more teachers, and it needs to be backed up with across-the-board awards that address the fact that the real value of pay has been eroded over the past decade.

But the point is the extra money for schools probably won’t feel like extra money once pay awards are taken into account.

Pressure on 16-19 education

There’s also the continuing pressure on 16-19 education.

The government has announced extra money for the sector - but this funds an increase in the number of students while maintaining current funding rates. The problem is that the current funding rates per learner are far too low and have been for many years.

The base rate is still only £4,188, an improvement on the £4,000 that was in place for a number of years, but still a long way short of the £4,760 that the Commons Education Select Committee called for two years ago.

What always strikes me as particularly bizarre about this is why it is so much less than secondary education (where minimum funding per pupil is £5,415) and university tuition fees (up to £9,250).

This may seem like a protracted moan about a Budget that, all things considered, is a great deal better for education than the dark days of the 2010s. But having taken such a battering over the past decade or so, we’re building on a low financial base, and that is then compounded by the damage caused by Covid.

So, yes, it is a Budget that goes some way to address some of the pressures on the sector, but not far enough.

Transformational change

The summary, then, is that there is still a lot of work to do. Money isn’t the whole answer, of course, but it is difficult to bring about transformational change without enough resources.

And we do still need transformational change for children whose lives are blighted by persistent poverty, and those with special educational needs, so that all young people have the best life chances possible.

The chancellor - on behalf of a government that is big on blustery promises - had the opportunity to outline not only the costs of investing in education but the essential need to do so.

It was his opportunity to shape the kind of society we live in, breaking the cycle of generational disadvantage, tackling unacceptable levels of child poverty, and giving fresh hope via education to communities that feel left behind.

We got none of that. It was a Budget of costs, not values.

Geoff Barton is general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders