An extra £40 million of government funding to help schools struggling financially this year has been dismissed as a “tokenistic sticking plaster” that “won’t be enough” by sector leaders.
The Department for Education announced last week that £20 million would be distributed between 35 local authorities that have the largest maintained school deficits - meaning council-run schools in three-quarters of the local education authority areas in England will not receive anything.
The other half will be distributed by the Education, Skills and Funding Agency to academies in need of financial help.
But union leaders, special schools and schools business leaders have warned it is not enough.
The hardship fund money for schools in deficit was announced in July as part of the Teacher Pay Deal, but details of how it will be distributed have only just been announced by the DfE.
“It’s not enough”, Stephen Morales, chief executive of the Institute of School Business Leadership, told Tes. “Obviously, any money is welcome, but it feels tokenistic, and like a sticking plaster solution rather than something meaningful.”
Alistair Crawford, co-chair of the National Network of Specialist Provision, told Tes some of their schools were projecting deficits “upwards of £1 million” in-year and beyond that.
He said: “Any money is always needed and very much welcome into the system, but it’s not going to make any real dent to the funding crisis and significant challenges faced by specialist settings.
“We are again looking at sticking plaster, reactive short-term solutions and fixes to very complex issues that have been compounded by poor decision making and chronic underfunding over a number of years.”
He added that headteachers were telling the networks they were having to think about how they can “manage expectations” of provision in some cases.
Special schools facing financial pressure
Special school head Simon Knight posted on social media to point out that the allocation for the whole of Oxfordshire - where his school is based - was less than the in-year deficit for his school alone.
He added: “The government has utterly shafted the special schools.”
Special schools are facing financial pressure as a result of rising costs of both teaching staff and support staff, who are typically employed in larger numbers in specialist settings.
The DfE guidance set out that local authorities allocated cash were those with “aggregated school-level deficits as a proportion of their total maintained schools’ income above 1 per cent”.
The funding is a one-off for this year, and the funding received is in proportion to each local authority’s deficit.
‘Not enough money to go around’
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, welcomed the funding but said the criteria is “likely to mean that there will be schools in other non-qualifying areas which are extremely hard-pressed but miss out on this support”.
He added: “The problem is that, while £40 million sounds like a lot of money, it is in fact a fairly small pot compared to the size of the school system, which comprises some 22,000 schools, a large number of which are under significant financial strain.
“In short, there is simply not enough money to go around.”
Funding and costs grow at similar rates
Analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies recently found that school budgets are ”largely stagnating in real terms” as funding and costs grow at similar rates. Researchers warned special schools would be particularly impacted.
Mr Barton said that special schools were particularly struggling with cost pressures.
“It is likely that in many cases the amount of available funding in general will not be adequate to fully offset these cost pressures, and the hardship fund is probably not large enough or widescale enough to bridge those gaps,” he said.
‘Financial relief welcome’
Leora Cruddas, chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts, said that schools and trusts are under considerable financial pressure.
She added: “The £40 million additional funding that was announced by the government for this year to support individual schools and trusts is, therefore, welcome.
“This funding is in addition to the £525 million schools and trusts will receive through the teachers’ pay additional grant.
“We know that for some schools and trusts the burden of cost pressures is enormous so a process to secure some financial relief will be welcome.”
The DfE has been approached for a comment.
