In Leicestershire we broke up on July 7. I was ready for the holiday, and the staff and students were too.
There are always loose ends to tie off, but the big ticket items were done: recruitment for September, budget sign off, three-year plan (costed) and building work for summer (paid for and signed off).
But within two weeks of the summer break, the government announced its teacher pay proposals. Experienced teachers will get a five per cent rise (rather than the government’s proposed three per cent). Proposals for rises of up to 10.5 per cent for the lowest-paid support staff have also been tabled.
We had factored into our budget three per cent for support staff and a sliding scale for teachers which ranged from four to seven per cent – depending upon experience. This felt prudent and well informed.
We’ve had to strike a delicate balance at our two secondary schools over the past few years.
One school was solidly good, oversubscribed but running a chunky deficit.
The other had a small reserve, but was about to head into a serious deficit as the intake had shrunk to less than 50 per cent of its published admission number. The school was stuck with a ‘requires improvement’ judgement.
But staff have worked incredibly hard to boost its reputation and the school is now oversubscribed and ‘good’.
This next academic year, both schools were finally in a position to return a balanced budget with a small reserve contribution. This has been a huge undertaking – staff have altered the way they work and embraced all sorts of changes.
The summer now becomes a time for deciding what we have to back track on to balance things. Each decision will impact students
For instance, we haven’t used external supply in over two years and have relied on our own teachers and senior leaders covering for each other.
We have increased the teaching load of our leadership teams and cut back on any meeting times or non student facing tasks during the school day.
But with the announced pay uplifts, the situation has changed dramatically. While the pay rises are well overdue and more than justified, they come with no extra funding – and therefore have huge implications.
Having returned from a two-week break, I have had a first glimpse of what those implications might be.
Purely looking at the support staff increase across the two schools: the implications are a £10,000 per month increase in costs, over and above what we budgeted. This is before we factor in the implication of the teachers’ pay increase (likely to be just as large).
If both increases cause a £120,000 increase in our wage bill – with no additional funding – then we potentially go from a position where we return a £100,000 contribution to our reserves, to a position where we build up a deficit of around £140,000 over the academic year.
To be clear – we can’t run a deficit budget. So, the summer now becomes a time for deciding what we have to back track on to balance things. Each decision will impact students.
This could easily result in a recruitment freeze until the funding issues are resolved at a national level. This would reduce our flexibility to support vulnerable learners and likely mean students receive significantly reduced additional support.
We may also have to revisit our plans for the additional activities which supplement the core offering to students. Our access to higher education programmes and additional tutoring all have cost implications which may mean they have to be significantly reduced, too.
Meanwhile, the current prime minister leadership race focuses on whether to open more grammar schools – totally missing the point.
To read about one of those contenders, Rishi Sunak, also boasting about giving wealthy areas cash that was previously allocated to deprived areas is beyond infuriating.
We will go into this year with less per pupil funding than in 2010. We will work wonders with our students, but we will do it with our hands tied behind our backs and reliant on good will rather than the expertise of a well-funded and respected profession.
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