The government must act now to stop schools “nose diving” into industrial action as rising costs threaten to affect the quality of school provision, school leaders have warned today.
The call from school and staff leaders came as weeks of chaos culminated in the resignation of Liz Truss as prime minister today, after just two months in office.
Ms Truss’ education secretary, Kit Malthouse, had been warned over potential industrial action by heads and teachers before the prime minister’s resignation, a move that headteacher Robin Bevan today said is “understandable but entirely avoidable.”
“We need immediate, assured and confident leadership on the issue of pay - for teachers and support staff: the sector is nose diving into understandable, but inherently avoidable, industrial action,” said Bevan, who leads Southend High School for Boys.
”[We need] a clear statement of intent and a rapid collaborative effort to have a suitably bold action plan in place well before Christmas.
“The tired platitudes of earnest intent really need to be replaced with an immediate acknowledgement of these three urgent issues: pay, funding and poverty,” he added.
Jonny Uttley, chief executive of the Education Alliance, which runs schools in Hull and East Yorkshire, echoed Mr Bevan’s call for immediate action to support schools to fund teacher pay rises.
He warned that the sector would face a “crisis” if plans laid out by newly minted chancellor Jeremy Hunt to further cut public spending came to bear.
”Trusts I speak to everywhere are preparing to eat into their reserves to get through this year, but what happens after this?” Uttley said.
Catharine Darnton, the headteacher of Gillotts School, in Henley-on-Thames, warned that the current political hiatus comes at a time when schools are still unable to set their in year budgets.
She said: ”As hard as this is to believe, headteachers cannot currently accurately plan their budget for the current financial year. The pay award for support staff from April 2022 is not agreed - an offer of a flat rate increase of £1925, which equates to between 4% and 10.5% depending on grade, is currently being consulted on.”
Mr Uttley also highlighted the ongoing issue of extending free school meals.
“Schools need help from the government now with help in tackling the effects of poverty that we are seeing, as there are thousands of pupils coming to schools who are skipping meals,” he said.
“One step that would really help is to extend the eligibility of free school meals to include everyone from a family who is in receipt of universal credit.
“With soaring food inflation, this has gone from something that would have been a progressive policy move two or three years ago, that we would all have really welcomed, to now something that is simply urgently needed to avoid schools having hundreds of thousands of children coming into schools hungry.”
Schools Bill doubts
The ongoing uncertainty over the future of the Schools Bill is also putting school improvement at risk, leaders have warned.
The bill has been gutted and delayed during its parliamentary procedure following publication in May, and was reported to be headed to the chopping block today via an update from the education secretary in the House of Commons.
However, at the time of publication, the bill remains active, creating further uncertainty around many of its key tenets such as multi-academy trust (MAT) regulation.
This, according to Mr Uttley, further muddies the waters for MAT leaders in already uncertain times, as maintained schools are deciding that they do not need to consider academy status as it appears the policy priority is on hold.
Speaking to Tes, Sir Steve Lancashire, former MAT chief executive and founder of REAch2 Academy Trust, said the bill was set to fail during the parliamentary process from the start.
“There was so little consultation on it and thus consensus that it was never going to get the traction, hence the Lords shredding it,” he said.
“It went against the very principle of autonomy and freedom for schools to set out their own strategy, which is the whole point.”
He added that its progress had become a “distraction” to the sector in a time when its focus was needed elsewhere and called on educators to “stop being at the whim of politicians and be consulted properly”.
Rob McDonough, chief executive of the 21-school East Midlands Educational Trust, said that while the bill may not survive in its current form, elements of it could prove very useful to MAT leaders and schools if pursued through a regulatory framework.
”We hope to see the move from legislation to regulations and if elements of the Schools Bill manifest themselves in regulation along with the MAT advisory group, which has some significant players involved, I am hopeful that will bring really positive things,” he said.
Mr McDonough said he hoped to see progress on measures that would provide “incentives” to more schools joining MATs through regulation, including the Department for Education intervening to help schools move from local authority control into a MAT.
”Some schools have clung on to local authorities, but they don’t want the schools because they can’t support them and so schools remain isolated,” he said.
“Through regulation with these schools, we can require them to join into trusts and positively incentivise schools to make the change.”
‘Ongoing turmoil’
The fate of the Schools Bill is unlikely to be decided during the coming week as yet another Conservative leadership race will get under way and conclude, leaving education leaders in limbo once again.
Following Ms Truss’ resignation announcement, Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders’ union the NAHT, stressed the importance of not letting the “ongoing turmoil” in government get in the way of rectifying the cost and staffing crisis faced by schools.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, told Tes: “Next week, a third prime minister of 2022 will take office, while four people have held the post of education secretary this year and there is now the prospect of a fifth.
“This lack of stability is not conducive to having a government that understands the complexities of the education sector and appreciates the major challenges it is currently facing. It feels an age since we had a government that believes in education, that sees young people as an investment in the nation’s future. This must change.”
Glyn Potts, head at Newman RC College in Oldham, echoed Mr Barton’s call for stability.
“We need a plan for education that takes the next 15 years, not the next 15 days, into account,” he said. “We do not need more change at the moment but we do need the right change at the right time.”
