A headteacher who launched a national school funding campaign says he has received “intimidatory” messages from MPs.
Jules White, headteacher at Tanbridge House School, a secondary in Horsham, West Sussex, is the founder of the WorthLess? campaign, which represents more than 6,000 headteachers across the country.
In an interview with Tes, he said that challenging government decisions in public had required an element of “professional courage”.
He said: “The bottom line is...your job as a headteacher carries with it a lot of vulnerability anyway. What happens if something goes wrong in your school? What happens if your results go through the floor?”
The response from MPs and the Department for Education has not been entirely positive, he said.
“I know that senior people in the DfE are of course aware of WorthLess? and me,” he said. “It has been intimidating at times, and you do receive some very robust emails. Partly from the DfE, perhaps from MPs - and you know that you’ve hacked some people off...and they make it quite clear in meetings.”
“I would actually say there’s been some really tricky emails [from MPs], and they’re intimidatory.”
At an event at Parliament, White says he was introduced to a “very senior politician” who immediately turned his back on him “to the absolute horror of other headteachers watching”.
“He felt that what I was doing was blaming a certain group of MPs [for school funding problems],” said White.
He did not name the MPs concerned, but said they did not include schools minister Nick Gibb, who is a nearby MP.
However, the headteacher criticised politicians, including Mr Gibb and education secretary Damian Hinds, for failing to be upfront about school cuts.
He said: “Obviously we’re pragmatic, they’re not going to go out to the public and say ‘everything’s in crisis’.
“They have to articulate stuff in a sensible and reasonable way. But the disaffection they’ve caused, and the complete lack of trust, in saying, ‘More money than ever before is going into schools, the NFF [National Funding Formula] is giving everyone a rise in real terms’.
“It’s at best disingenuous, at worst, deliberately misleading…I can’t stand bullshit.
“Of course they don’t believe in it. They absolutely know there are schools on the breadline.”
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “The facts are that school funding is not only rising to a record level of £43.5 billion by 2020, but independent analysis from the Institute of Fiscal Studies has shown that real terms per pupil funding in 2020 will be more than 50 per cent higher than it was in 2000.
“Funding for the average primary school class is also £132,000 - up £8,000 in the last decade and the same class of pupils would get £171,000 in secondary school - up £10,000 on the decade - both in today’s prices.
“However, we of course recognise that we are asking schools to do more which is why the education secretary has set out his determination to work with schools to bear down on cost pressures and help them make the best use of their resources.”
To read the full interview, see the 27 July edition of Tes. Subscribers can read the full article here. This week’s Tes magazine is available in all good newsagents. To download the digital edition, Android users can click here and iOS users can click here.
