Education leaders fear the chancellor’s “cheap” Budget will “damage life chances for years”, with extra catch-up cash for schools falling “a long way short of what is needed”.
This afternoon, the Treasury announced that a further £1.8 billion will be invested in the Covid catch-up effort over the next three years, taking the total spend to almost £5 billion.
Mr Sunak said schools will get an extra £4.7 billion by 2024-25, which, combined with plans announced at the spending review in 2019, will restore per-pupil funding to 2010 levels in real terms.
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But heads’ and teachers’ leaders have warned that this is not enough.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said that today’s announcement represented “at least some progress in the right direction” but “significant investment” was still needed to “repair the damage done by a decade of austerity”.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT school leaders’ union, said the extra contribution did not “fully recognise” that education was “an investment in not only our children’s life chances, but in the nation’s future”.
And Kevin Courtney, joint-general secretary of the NEU teaching union, said that Mr Sunak had “only underscored his failure to deliver for staff, young people and parents”.
The chancellor said that restoring per-pupil funding to 2010 levels would be equivalent to a cash increase for every child of more than £1,500.
But Mr Barton said he would need to see further details of the spending plans before judging the “full implications”.
“Even in the best-case analysis this still represents no growth in school funding for 15 years, and this commitment does not address the stark reality in 16-19 education where the learner rate is far too low,” he said.
“What we do know is that school and college budgets are very thinly stretched and the financial situation continues to be extremely difficult.”
Mr Whiteman also said a return to 2010 levels was “no proud boast”, as it represented “a failure to invest in children’s futures for over a decade”.
Mr Barton added that the £1.8 billion for education recovery was “nowhere near what is needed”.
This was echoed by Mr Courtney, who said the catch-up offer was “completely inadequate” - with Mr Sunak “determined that education recovery will be done on the cheap”.
Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, told BBC News that spending increases in education were “hardly a bonanza” in the face of inequality brought about by the pandemic.
He said: “Returning spending to where it was in 2010 is not an enormous amount to boast about.
“To have no growth over 15 years in such an important part of public services is unprecedented, so it’s hardly a bonanza in the education system.
“I think in terms of schools, there’s been so much good news about the impact of the pandemic in general - it hasn’t, in general, hit younger people in the end more than older people, it hasn’t even particularly hit lower-paid people more than better-paid people in the end, but it has really hit less-well-off children much more than it has better-off children, so I think spending additional money well to fix that particular increase in inequality, I would have thought, would be one of the biggest priorities of the government.”
