If any headteachers chose to spend a valuable half-term hour watching the chancellor give his Budget statement, they would, I’m sure, have raised an eyebrow as he boasted of returning school funding to 2010 levels.

This felt roughly akin to borrowing a tenner off someone and then making a big show of giving it back. 

Nevertheless, there will be relief that budgets are finally going in the right direction again, even if it’s a paltry increase compared with that received by the NHS, and the promised Covid recovery funding is worth only a fifth of that requested by “recovery tsar” Sir Kevan Collins.

The spending review, though, only gives us part of the equation.

We now know how much money schools will have over the next three years, but we don’t what their costs will be. For any school trying to plan, it’s now these questions that need answering.

Budget 2021 and school funding: Concerns over teacher pay rises

The first question is around salaries.

Schools’ biggest cost by far is staff and, while the chancellor told us that public sector pay will, finally, rise again, he did not tell us by how much.

Pay review boards will be reporting soon and their verdict will have a big impact on budgets as there will be no extra money to cover increases, whatever they are.

Moreover, the small print in the Budget documents suggests that the government will keep its manifesto pledge to put teacher starting salaries up to £30,000 - 16 per cent higher than now for schools outside London.

Of course, putting up starting salaries doesn’t just affect the cost of new teachers - it would mean the whole pay scale would need to shift up to ensure pay progression.

It’s hard to see how the £30,000 target could be achieved without a 10 per cent or so increase in all teaching staff costs, which wouldn’t just wipe out any increases but effectively represent a sizeable cut in overall budgets.

More detail on this is urgently required.

Long-term academy plans

The second big “costs” question relates to the White Paper due next year. All that’s been said publicly is that it will focus on numeracy and literacy.

It’s unclear how these could be improved without extra investment, but there was no announcement of additional money in the Budget.

If schools are expected to fund new programmes then that will be another drain on resources.

The White Paper is also expected to set out the next stage of system reforms, including a process for eventually moving to a system where all schools are in a multi-academy trust.

Again, this would come with costs for schools - both for those that are yet to convert and trusts that will be expected to take on new schools. And, again, it’s unclear where these costs will sit.

Then there’s the long-awaited SEND review, which will have to reckon with the huge excess demand for education, health and care plans.

At the moment it’s local authorities that are having to scrape around for extra funds but if the review were to put more responsibilities on schools there would, once more, be a question of how it would be paid for.

Mental health support - an urgent issue  

The final question is around the ongoing cost of managing failure in other parts of the public sector. There was no new money for child and adolescent mental health services, which are undergoing a slow-motion collapse.

This month’s £20 a week cut to universal credit was not restored, nor was there any other support for the poorest families who do not have a parent in work.

With 4 million families already in arrears on their bills, and further cost-of-living increases on the horizon, the most disadvantaged young people will be more dependent on schools than ever before.

It is pretty much impossible for schools and trusts to put together a realistic long-term budget until we have answers to these questions on costs.

What will the new salary bands be? Will there be unfunded expectations on schools in the White Paper or SEND review? How bad will the impact of inflation be on low-income families?

When we have the answers, headteachers may find the chancellor’s boasts even more galling. 

Sam Freedman is a former senior policy adviser at the Department for Education and a senior fellow at the Institute of Government