The school funding crunch has become a staple news splash for the mainstream and specialist education press.
But beneath this broad national picture of a system in crisis are many smaller, unseen battles as individual local authorities and schools try to do more and more, without the funds to match.
Financial recovery plans drawn up by councils and seen by Tes show, at a micro level, how some of these struggles are being played out across the country.
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The Department for Education had asked the 32 councils with the biggest deficits in their 2018-19 schools budget to explain how they would get into the black within three years.
In response, the vast majority - 29 of the 32 - simply said this was unachievable. Many went further, admitting that the deficits were expected to grow within the timeframe - even doubling in some cases.
One authority, Salford, was optimistic that it could shrink its cumulative deficit from the £10.3 million it posted in 2018-19, down to just £224,000. However, this wouldn’t be achieved until 2041 - far too late to help the current generation of pupils.
The cause of all this financial strain? Most evidence points to a growing chasm between the demand for services supporting pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and the money available to fund them.
All the recovery plans highlighted SEND funding shortages - and some spelled out precisely why the situation has become so desperate.
Take Hammersmith and Fulham, for example. The borough has, its plan states, seen a 42 per cent increase in the number of Education Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) since 2016, which it says is fuelled by “higher parental expectations, increasingly complex needs and higher diagnostic rates and systemic financial pressures on schools”.
The overall cumulative deficit in its dedicated schools budget was £14.1 million in 2018-19. Far from being wiped out, it expected this to rise to £29.5 million by the end of 2022.
Many local authorities also highlighted the spiralling costs of alternative provision. The reasons for this vary, but one London borough, Southwark, named “knife crime” as a factor driving demand.
Attempts to tackle the deficits also varied from place to place. In Dorset, plans were afoot to split the costs of temporary exclusions equally between the local authority and schools, potentially saving £900,000 a year by reducing permanent exclusions. It’s small change in the context of a £15.3 million deficit - but every pound counts.
Many of the other councils planned to cut AP places and move pupils back into mainstream schools.
Some were reviewing the “top-up” funding given to schools to support pupils with particularly complex needs.
At least two local authorities planned to spend less on services such as home tuition for children who are too unwell to attend school.
It’s important to note that these plans were drawn up before the government pledged to give schools an extra £7.1 billion over the next three years, although unions and funding experts have questioned whether it is enough after years of real terms cuts.
Funding experts are also raising questions about whether the money will go to where it’s most needed, and point out that the £780 million of extra SEND cash is only for one year.
Separately, the DfE is now proposing to stop councils from using general funds to plug holes in their schools budget, giving them even less financial wiggle room.
It is perhaps a recognition that other parts of the public sector are feeling the pinch just as much, or more than, schools. But in itself, this fact is making things more difficult for those working in education; many of the recovery plans mention NHS cutbacks in services like speech and language therapy. In some cases, shortfalls are being filled using the schools budget.
So whether or not the extra money helps some of these local authorities to clear their deficits in a shorter timescale, there will still need to be substantial savings to their schools budgets.
When headlines contain words like “billions” and refer to national school funding levels going up or down by a percentage amount, it can be difficult to picture how this will play out on the ground. Today’s story is a reminder of what these big numbers actually mean for some of the pupils, teachers, schools, headteachers and local authorities at the receiving end of decisions made in Whitehall.
