In a recent blog post, Tes columnist and former government adviser Sam Freedman wrote of a “coming storm” referring to what he calls a series of interconnecting crises of a truly frightening scale.

His analysis is typically wide-ranging, looking at political, social and economic uncertainties.

This inevitably includes education and we are seeing already how this is impacting the sector - with a piece on Tes earlier this week outlining the huge financial strain that schools and trusts are under as energy bills soar, wages are boosted without funding and inflation drives up costs, such as food.

One trust leader revealed their energy budget will rise by £9.2 million while another said the unfunded pay rises have added £2 million to the wage bill. It is no surprise that many leaders are warning of a coming catastrophe.

Calling for action

Given these concerns, CST has written to both Conservative Party leadership contestants to highlight the huge pressures on the sector - and we will work with the new prime minister, senior officials, the Treasury, and the ministerial team at the Department for Education to make the evidence-based case that the combination of these cost pressures is unaffordable within current resources. 

Yet the government’s position is that these cost pressures are affordable given what they call the “generous settlement” in the 2021 spending review.

But the huge cost pressures on school budgets were not known back in October 2021, when the outcome of the spending review was announced. Neither the teacher pay award nor the support-staff pay offer was known at this point.

The war in Ukraine had not started and energy costs were pretty stable. Inflation had started to rise, in large part owing to increased spending during the Covid crisis, but it was nothing like the sort of inflation we are seeing now, which is triggering a cost-of-living crisis. 

Even back then, it is extraordinary that the former Chancellor of the Exchequer felt it appropriate to draw attention to the fact that per-pupil spending in schools will only just have returned to 2010 levels by 2024.

Not affordable anymore

This is a statement of a remarkable lack of priority afforded to funding the education system in a sustainable way. This issue was underscored by a short analysis of school funding at the system level by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).

While the authors concluded that pressures related to pay awards and pay offers are “just about affordable”, they also point out that cost increases won’t be felt equally and that future real-terms cuts are inevitable: “Faster growth in school costs will reduce the purchasing power of school budgets. After accounting for growth in the specific costs faced by schools, [IFS] estimates that school spending per pupil will remain 3 per cent below 2010 levels in real terms.” 

However, the IFS analysis does not factor in, at individual school- or trust-level, the impact of exponentially rising energy costs for those schools and trusts coming out of energy contracts in the next financial year.

The IFS does, though, make mention of the unique position of special schools and specialist provision settings. These are likely to be very badly impacted by the pay pressures because they rely more on support staff, and potentially have greater energy costs because of specialist equipment. They are also at the whim of local authorities regarding funding increases and the school supplementary grant.

Most crucially, however, the IFS analysis does not factor in the fact that the financial year for an academy trust begins in September. 

As such, trusts will face the full impact of the teachers’ pay award as well as the additional costs of a back-dated pay offer for support staff. As such, for academy trusts (and quite probably for all schools), these cost pressures are not “just about affordable”.

An impossible position

In fact, many are now in an impossible position. They will have to look at measures that will have an impact. There is very little fat in school budgets - our education system runs on lean principles and there is almost no waste.

The additional pressures on budgets are, for some, eye-watering sums as they come out of energy contracts. 

School and trust leaders will do what they always do - they will work hard to mitigate the impact of all of this on children and young people. But there is no doubt that they are very concerned about the impact of inflation and energy costs on our children and young people, particularly as we approach the winter months.

Winter is coming - we must act now

That this has been coming has been plain to see for some time. As Sam Freedman sums up in his blog post: “You’d have to have spent summer in an alternate reality not to know how bad things are about to get.”

Yet despite this, government action on the issue has not been forthcoming. As such, CST’s message to the incoming government that will form early next week is that doing nothing is not an option.

We need specific, costed, credible policy proposals supporting the public sector and families who will be worst affected by the cost-of-living crisis. 

As a society, we have a duty of care and this should once again define us as we learn how to live in a post-pandemic world with such economic, political and social uncertainty. 

Leora Cruddas is the CEO of the Confederation of School Trusts