Hilton Primary School in Derbyshire, where I am a parent governor, is one of the apparently rare examples of a school that welcomes the new national funding formula. The school has been so underfunded historically that even this much-maligned formula will leave us better off

While the immediate blame can be laid at the door of the local authority for devising its own formula which penalises larger schools (and ours is twice as big as any other primary in the county), the bigger picture is that there is simply not enough money in the pot.

We are well aware that if we had more money then other schools would lose out, simply because the funding going from central government to Derbyshire County Council is not enough.

The government continually - and tellingly - trots out the line about investment being higher than it has ever been but an increase in pupil numbers and a huge increase (government-initiated) in costs means schools have never had it so bad.

Each child who walks through the gates of Hilton Primary School receives less money per head for their education than any other child in Derbyshire.

That’s more than 850 children who receive £3,090 each per year, compared with the county average of £3,888. It may not sound a big difference but added together, it’s more than £650,000.

Seeing as Derbyshire County Council’s funding for schools as a whole is among the lowest in the country, that puts our children pretty near the bottom of the pile nationally.

You would assume we must be struggling. Well, yes and no.

Our staff can’t work any harder

Somehow, against considerable odds, Hilton Primary School is both a “good” school and a high-achieving one. It has a happy and successful student population and a fantastic staff team. But we have now reached a point where we simply can’t do it any more. People can’t work any harder or any longer hours.

We have cut everything from the budget that can be cut. Indeed, spending has now been stopped apart from essentials - and we’re talking toilet roll and soap essentials here, not exercise books and IT equipment.

Class sizes have crept up and up, averaging over 30 in key stage 2 with some now at 35; staff who leave are not being replaced and staff who are absent are being covered by senior leaders rather than supply teachers. We turned the heating off even though it was 5C the other morning.

We’ve cancelled all refurbishment and maintenance; there will be no more iPads and no new computers to replace ours, which barely function. I know staff are buying equipment for the classrooms with their own money.

All this comes on top of the fact that we already spend some of the lowest sums per pupil in the country on our leadership team, teaching staff and administration function.

Our headteacher, who frankly deserves a medal for the superhuman effort he is putting in, is not even getting a pay rise because he has refused to accept the rise he has earned for the past two years.

And still we have a £120,000 hole in our budget for the coming year, which means we will lose around 13 - a third - of our brilliant and invaluable TA workforce. This option will have terrible consequences for every child and for our ethos as a school.

With classes of up to 35 pupils, having a TA available for half the day is not just handy, it’s invaluable. For some of our children with additional needs, it’s essential.

We are doing well academically but our commitment to educating the whole child is genuine and goes well beyond words in a mission statement. It’s happening at the school every single day.

In the past, we have been able to take children who have such challenges that they can barely make it into the classroom, let alone access the curriculum, and a few years later they are in class, happy and doing well, just like anyone else. Some parents tell us that without our TAs, their child simply would not be at a mainstream school. This is something we’re very proud of.

When you serve a community, you serve all of it not just the straightforward parts. And ultimately, every child benefits in terms of broadening their field of experience, developing their compassion and understanding, and actually being able to meet friends they may otherwise never have met.

Cutting TAs will mean losing pupils, too

If we have to lay off a third of our TAs, we will lose a number of pupils. We simply won’t be able to cater for them and keep them and their peers safe. They will be forced to leave a place where they are happy and thriving and go somewhere new where they will start all over again. It is a very painful thought for teachers, senior leaders and governors alike.

The absurdity of it is that places at special schools cost between £10,000 and £50,000 a year. If a handful of pupils leave, the local authority will be paying out more than if it had simply given us enough money to keep our TAs and, therefore, these pupils. It is the very epitome of a false economy. (The other farce is that if we do make these TAs redundant in order to make up our £120,000 budget shortfall, redundancy costs for the year will be largely similar to a year’s salaries.)

Our commitment to nurturing our children through school to try and turn out a few more rounded individuals - and, God knows, we need a few more of them at the moment - has resulted in us becoming an attachment-aware school, whereby staff use widely accepted attachment theory in order to better understand children’s behaviour and emotional wellbeing and how best to address it.

It is a whole new way of looking at working with children and can only be positive, especially for the more vulnerable children who may have difficult and chaotic home lives. This, too, is in jeopardy if these cuts are made.

All our great efforts put in jeopardy

The painful thing about all this is that this school is ready to become truly outstanding. It has excellent leaders, strong teachers, committed TAs, not to mention the admin staff, caretakers, lunchtime supervisors, parent volunteers and everyone else who goes to make it a success.

The school is working on making the curriculum ever more enquiry-based to ensure that amidst the clamour for stats and Sats, we try and retain that innate thirst for knowledge that children have and which should power their passion for learning about themselves and the world.

We want to allow each child to find their strengths and to nurture them - that may be drama or geography or football or, frankly, anything. English and maths are crucial, of course, but they are far from everything.

We want our children to learn about friendships, to learn about themselves, to build confidence and resilience, to learn when to stand their ground and when to compromise, to learn to think for themselves - all those skills that prepare us for productive and happy lives.

For me, success is about academic achievement, of course, but equally as much about seeing a child leave school with a smile on their face, bursting to tell their parents what they did today.

We are on the cusp of doing something wonderful at this school and for these children, and this situation could undo everything. Our children get one shot at growing up - they don’t deserve to be politicians’ playthings.

Nick Campion is a parent govenor at Hilton Primary School in Derbyshire

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