Almost seven in 10 school leaders and teachers fear that spending cuts forced by rising costs are likely to prevent them from delivering a broad and balanced curriculum this year, a Tes survey has revealed.
The majority of respondents (68 per cent) to a Tes snap poll said they feared it was “likely” that the cuts would prevent them from providing the curriculum range expected by the government.
The poll was conducted ahead of the energy costs announcement by new prime minister Liz Truss, which revealed a six-month support scheme for schools.
Of the 600 responses submitted from primary, secondary, alternative provision and special school settings, more than a quarter (29 per cent) felt this scenario was highly likely, while almost four in 10 (39 per cent) thought it was likely.
This comes as school leaders warn of a “catastrophic” winter as they face five-fold energy price hikes and underfunded pay awards.
The Tes poll has sought to gauge the impact the crisis will have on schools’ ability to deliver on the curriculum as well as continue to provide support to disadvantaged pupils.
The importance of a ‘broad and balanced’ curriculum
Achieving a “broad and balanced” curriculum has been the aim set out for schools by both the government and, increasingly, Ofsted, under its current school inspection framework which launched three years ago.
In 2021, former schools minister Nick Gibb said “the teaching of a broad and balanced academic curriculum is central to Levelling Up”, “pupil wellbeing” and “preparing pupils for the 21st century”.
But now concerns are emerging that schools’ ability to deliver this could be harmed by the funding crisis and soaring energy bills that are set to eat away at school budgets.
The spread of responses across different school phases in the poll was similar, with 67 per cent of those in primary (306 responses) and 68 per cent in secondary settings (261 responses) believing it was likely or highly likely that the curriculum would be affected.
In special schools, the sample was considerably smaller ( with 25 responses) but 21 of those responses thought it was likely that the broad and balanced curriculum would be affected.
‘Most significant’ crisis yet
Simon Kidwell, principal at Hartford Manor, told Tes that the “crisis” schools are facing is “the most significant” he has faced in 18 years of being a school leader or teacher.
Mr Kidwell said his school was currently looking at a “shortfall” of around £80,000 that “we haven’t budgeted for”, adding he was “clearly going to look at the curriculum and look where we can make cost savings”.
He added that alongside school trips and extracurricular activities, they are also looking at the swimming curriculum, which currently costs the school £500 a week for the transport and hire of the pools.
He said that the school was looking at moving to spending just a half term on swimming lessons, and then “just targeting the children that haven’t achieved the 25 metres” target.
What cuts are schools looking at?
He also said there are going to be staff cuts “eventually” which may mean them losing some of the specialist teachers who support them with music and modern foreign languages, for example.
“We may have to lose those roles and look at more generic staffing models for that,” he added.
Furthermore, Mr Kidwell said that “once you start not having these specialist teachers, you then have a curriculum that is diluted”.
As part of the snap poll, Tes asked respondents which measures schools will have to consider because of rising costs. Seventeen per cent said restricting heating, while 14.7 per cent said spending less on teaching resources (both non-ICT and ICT).
Respondents could select as many options as they wished.
Dan Morrow, chief executive and trust leader at Dartmoor Multi Academy Trust, says the broad and balanced curriculum is “almost like tuition” in that middle-class parents can seek help outside of school.
Mr Morrow added that the broad and balanced curriculum is “the bit that costs a lot of money”.
“When you’re talking about art and music and a number of other subjects, the resources budget is significantly higher because it costs a lot of money to use materials. And that is a significant part of where some savings may have to come with curriculum budgets.”
Effects on primary and secondary curriculums
Mr Morrow thinks there will be “more of an impact in primary” in terms of new books and “provision of reading schemes and reading opportunities, which is obviously incredibly important and is the foundation for a broad and balanced curriculum”.
He added: “Also, we’ll have to look at some of our peripatetic staffing where we have specialists who will come and deliver with your music or art or some of those broader aspects of curriculums, because you do need that broader subject expertise.”
At a secondary level, Mr Morrow feels the issues will come around the resourcing of subjects, adding there are already some subjects at his secondary school that “we run at losses”.
Mr Morrow says his school has drawn up “eight different kinds of scenarios” and is “having to look at every single thing”.
But no decisions have yet been made as, Mr Morrow says, “we just believe there has to be some form of government intervention so we don’t want to trigger anything too early” in case that comes.
But Mr Morrow warned that “in reality, nothing is off the table”.
Disadvantaged pupils ‘most likely to suffer’
Dame Alison Peacock, chief executive of the Chartered College of Teaching, spoke to Tes about the cuts schools will have to make to staff and the knock-on effects this will have on disadvantaged pupils.
Dame Alison said that the cuts “would need to be ancillary staff, support members of staff, additional members of staff who might be there to support with things like Family Liaison, or might be there to support breakfast clubs or additional resources that are there for youngsters”.
As a result, Dame Alison says, “the children who are most likely to suffer from that are the neediest”.
“So of course it does mean that our most disadvantaged youngsters and our youngsters with special educational needs are going to be the ones who miss out the most as soon as budgets are cut to the bone.”
Dame Alison added that the situation was “heartbreaking”.
Writing in a Headteachers’ Roundtable blog this week, Duncan Spalding, executive headteacher at Aylsham High School, said that as part of their increasing role in the community, schools have “rightly invested in skilled teams of LSAs/TAs, pastoral support workers and SEMH [social, emotional and mental health] workers to work alongside their highly skilled teachers”.
But now, Mr Spalding says that these “vital provisions are under grave threat because of the existential funding crisis facing schools”.
Mr Morrow added that trips and visits and cultural capital aspects are important in filling “a gap for disadvantaged pupils, but also to broaden their horizons”.
He said: “We can’t have that race to the bottom again, whereby we are cutting and cutting and cutting, but actually what we’re talking about is that child who maybe is not gifted and talented in English or maths but is an incredible artist, or has a real passion for music or food technology”.
‘Impossible situation’
Michael Tidd, headteacher of East Preston Junior School, told Tes that he had ambitions for the music curriculum at his school, but added that he “daren’t commit to anything at the moment until we’ve worked out” what the rest of the budget looks like.
Mr Tidd said he is still waiting to hear what the final energy bills are going to look like for his school this academic year.
In his school, Mr Tidd says he would like to have a specialist teacher coming in for music, and that had been a “long-term goal for a while” but “it seems like it gets further and further away each year”.
Mr Tidd says that as Ofsted publish the best practice-style reports for each subject, “it is really hard to see how you balance the ambition of those with the dire straits that schools are going to be in”.
He adds that, in an “ideal world”, all schools would be achieving “all the things that those reports set out as being the best practice”.
But Mr Tidd says they cannot do that, for example with music, because the school does not have the expertise and “even the interim arrangement that might have made a move towards it are impossible if you cannot afford them and I think that’s the concern”.
Ofsted’s education inspection framework, launched in 2019, places an increased emphasis on the school curriculum and on how individual subjects are taught and sequenced.
Mr Tidd suggested that schools failing Ofsted inspections because of the inability to deliver a broad and balanced curriculum will not “be an instant thing”.
Instead, “it will be that things won’t improve in the coming months and years because people can’t afford to do what they need to do”.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, asked how schools were meant to be able to “raise academic and social standards” if they have “deficit budget, a reduced staffing team and a lack of appropriate resources”.
“It’s an impossible situation.”
