More than half of school and trust governing board members have said balancing budgets is the biggest challenge they face, a new annual survey has revealed.
Less than two in 10 said they were financially sustainable in the medium to long term and around a third said they would need to dip into reserves to be able to set a balanced budget, according to new data from the National Governance Association (NGA).
The annual governance survey is a yearly self-selecting online survey that has been conducted by NGA for the past 13 years. This year’s survey, which was carried out between April and June, had 2,695 participants.
Here are the key findings...
1. Balancing budgets biggest challenge for governors
Balancing budgets remained the top challenge for governing boards. Just over half (52 per cent) of respondents highlighted this, an eight percentage point increase compared with last year.
Less than 2 in 10 said they were financially sustainable in the medium to long term and 9 per cent said they would not be able to set a balanced budget without a loan from the Education Skills and Funding Agency or a licensed deficit from their local authority.
The findings are based on answers provided before yesterday’s announcement of a 6.5 per cent teacher pay rise from the government.
2. Concern over attendance
Attendance is the second biggest challenge raised by school governors. It was also the only area that featured in both the top three challenges and top three priorities in the survey.
Three-quarters of respondents (76 per cent) said parental communication was their most successful tool in tackling this challenge.
One respondent to the survey said: “Attendance has declined significantly since Covid with families happy to pay fines to take children out of school during term-time.
“This is a major concern at the moment.”
3. Safeguarding concerns rising
More than half of the governors responding (55 per cent) reported a rise in safeguarding concerns in the past year alone.
Another 41 per cent said levels remained broadly the same in the last 12 months, with just 3 per cent reporting a decrease.
The top areas of concern identified were bullying, cyberbullying, neglect and domestic abuse.
The report also warned that self-harm was a common theme that appeared through open-text responses from respondents.
“These findings shine a light on the increasing complexities schools and trusts are dealing with in terms of both the variety and magnitude of safeguarding concerns”, the NGA report adds.
4. Support for strikes differs by age
This year’s survey included questions about the teacher strikes, which started in February as the NEU teaching union members staged a series of walkouts.
The government has been in dispute over pay with all four of the main school staff and leader unions, although all parties said yesterday that the new pay deal could bring an end to this.
The NGA poll shows that support for the strike varies by the age of the respondent.
Overall, 47 per cent of governors expressed support “for both the strike action and its underlying principles”.
The NGA found that respondents aged 30-39 showed the highest level of support (71 per cent), while those aged 60-69 were the least likely to do so (45 per cent).
5. Majority of governors back graded Ofsted school inspections
The report says that despite the increase in scrutiny of Ofsted’s role during 2023, “views on inspections among those governing remain diverse”.
A majority (60 per cent) support a graded school inspection system, while 34 per cent do not.
However, the findings also show that staff governors stand out as the most likely to oppose graded inspections with 58 per cent being against in contrast to the 38 per cent who support it.
The NGA report adds: “This finding is significant as it demonstrates that generally governing boards are perhaps less anti-inspection and Ofsted compared to leaders, teachers and other school or trust staff.
“This finding is in keeping with NGA’s longitudinal data, which has always pointed to boards generally being accepting of Ofsted playing an important sector role.”
Ofsted has faced calls to pause inspection this year following the death of headteacher Ruth Perry.
Labour has announced that, if elected, it would consult on scrapping school inspection grades and replace them with school scorecards.
6. Satisfaction with government record on education at an all-time low
Since 2011, the NGA has asked its members to give their verdict on how the government has performed in education for that academic year.
This year’s findings show satisfaction with the government’s performance on education is now at an all-time low among governing boards. Only 9 per cent of respondents were satisfied with how the government has performed in the last 12 months. This is the lowest rating since NGA began asking this question in 2011.
When it was first asked in 2011, 40 per cent said they were satisfied. Last year’s figure was 10 per cent.
DfE ‘focused on raising standards’
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “Our approach over the last 12 years has been focused on raising standards across the education sector and we have continued this in the past year.
“Our National Tutoring Programme has been crucial in helping those pupils most in need of support and following on from our long-term commitment to provide every pupil with high-quality phonics teaching, it was recently announced that England came fourth of the 43 countries that tested children of the same age in the 2021 Progress in International Literacy Study.
“Maths Hubs are on track to engage 75 per cent of primary schools and 65 per cent of secondary schools by the end of 2025 and as of December 2022, 88 per cent of schools were treated ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’, compared to 68 per cent in 2010.”
