Headteachers’ unions are set to meet with Department for Education officials later this week to demand answers over the impact of the error in school funding allocations for 2024-25.
Policy representatives from both school leaders’ union the NAHT and the Association of School and College Leaders are set to question DfE officials later this week, Tes understands.
It comes after the general secretary of the NEU teaching union Daniel Kebede said that there were “grounds to reopen [the] dispute” over teacher pay and funding, which was resolved in July.
This follows a DfE admission on Friday evening that an error processing forecast pupil numbers in the national funding formula (NFF) has meant that the previously announced rise of 2.7 per cent per pupil for 2024-25 has been revised down to 1.9 per cent per pupil for the same period.
Speaking over the weekend, Mr Kebede said that schools would have to find cuts of £370 million as a result of the error coming to light.
“We quite simply cannot make any more cuts,” Mr Kebede said, adding that the teacher pay deal was settled “on the premise that there would be protections around pupil funding”.
Sense of ‘betrayal’
Speaking to Tes over the weekend, Mr Kebede said that it would be “in the gift” of the union’s executive to form the discussions in a meeting on Thursday afternoon.
And he said that he was waiting for motions to drop on to his desk, which he said would “no doubt happen”.
When questioned about whether those motions could call for a ballot for strike action, Mr Kebede said that he didn’t want to “second-guess the executive”, but he did “get a feeling of almost a betrayal”.
“There was an agreed funding settlement as part of the dispute and now we’ve had almost £370 million cut from school budgets in a blink.”
‘Premature’ to presume impact on teacher pay deal
However, speaking to Tes, Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT, said that he thought it was “premature to make any decisions about how the deal we have done has been affected”.
He said that he wanted to “find out exactly the impact of the mistake”.
Meanwhile, ASCL is reviewing members’ opinions and reviewing the situation, Tes understands.
In an exit interview with Tes earlier this year, the former joint general secretaries of the NEU, Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney, warned that teachers would be willing to go on strike again this year if events play out in a similar way to how they did last year.
The DfE’s permanent secretary Susan Acland-Hood apologised to the education secretary Gillian Keegan and the Commons Education Select Committee for the mistake.
The revised allocations do not involve clawing back any money schools already have as the funding relates to indicative figures for 2024-25.
However, union leaders warn that it could mean schools having to revisit school budget planning.
