I have a lot of sympathy for those in government.

Managing a budget for a primary school is challenging enough; dealing with the sorts of figures that feature in national budgets is, without question, beyond me.

But then, I don’t have a department of economists working on it either.

I do know a thing or two about those primary school budgets, though.

Dwindling funds

I know that they’ve dwindled for years, with headteachers constantly forced to make difficult decisions: do we continue to provide teaching assistant support beyond the statutory minimums or provide high-quality books the children need?

Do we really need that second term of swimming lessons, given the costs of transport and pool hire? At what point do we ask the school PTA to start funding things that once used to be considered essential?

That was before we even began to think about the coronavirus.

Finally though, last year, it began to look like we might see funding on the increase rather than declining.

True, much of it would be eaten up by salaries, national insurance, and apprenticeship levies, but it was better than having to find more things to cut.

Missing windfalls

Yet here we are again trying to find ways of staying afloat. For whatever Messrs Williamson and Gibb might say about the mighty windfalls reaching schools, the reality is somewhat different.

Small increases in pupil-level funding for some schools won’t offset the additional costs that come with running a school in the best of times, let alone currently.

Of course, a typical primary school will now also receive a fund of just over £20,000 to pay for catch-up tuition for pupils affected by the virus. So now headteachers must face difficult decisions again.

Does the new pot of money pay for a highly-qualified tutor who can have a real impact on the children who most need it - or does it instead go towards the additional costs of keeping a school open in the current climate?

Extra cleaning costs

The additional costs - that the Department for Education seems not to believe exist - vary widely by school, but we’re all facing similar challenges.

Not least everyone is suddenly faced with ordering significantly more of the mundane cleaning products - from disinfectant sprays to the endless supply of paper towels now needed.

Then add in someone to do the cleaning: nobody previously working in schools was twiddling their thumbs before the virus struck, and so now the additional cleaning hours need to come from somewhere.

And it’s not only cleaning staff that are needed.

Ignoring the problem

Every school has had to work creatively to find ways of splitting its pupil body into smaller “bubbles”, and while that may seem easy in the classroom, it’s all the other spaces that present the challenge.

Whether it’s manning the gates for the staggered starts, keeping the playground supervised for the many timetabled breaktimes, or ensuring you’ve enough staff to deliver hot lunches around the whole school site, there are plenty of times in the school day where the previous skeleton staff we just about managed with is no longer enough.

That’s before we even mention the additional hours spent on preparing remote learning, working with families and managing the safeguarding issues that have increased as a result of the pandemic.

For the DfE to imagine that schools can meet all these extra costs from within their existing budgets suggests that they don’t understand the situation in schools in the slightest.

Michael Tidd is headteacher at East Preston Junior School in West Sussex