Richard Adams Education editor 

NUT ballot has exposed politicians’ dirty secret of schools austerity

Conservative and Labour pledges on education disguise the effects of upcoming cuts and contribution increases at the heart of the union’s proposal to strike
  
  

A National Union of Teachers rally in Bradford last year: while its strike motion concentrates on pay and workload issues, underneath there is concern for school funding overall.
A National Union of Teachers rally in Bradford last year: its strike motion concentrates on pay and workload issues, but there is also concern for overall school funding. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

The National Union of Teachers’ approval for a strike ballot brings to the fore a dirty secret shared by the Conservatives and Labour: that funding for schools in England will see steep cuts based on the promises both parties have made.

It is an issue that has largely flown under the election campaign radar so far, but schools and local authorities across England are now having to deal with the scope of the cuts as they set their budgets for next year, with many saying they are being forced to dip into their reserves to maintain staffing.

And it is those cuts that are at the heart of the NUT’s proposal for possible strikes. While the strike motion concentrates on pay and workload issues, underneath there is concern that school funding overall will be exposed to the types of austerity that other parts of government have suffered in recent years.

Both of the biggest parties argue they are protecting school budgets. But each policy has its own problems. The Conservatives say they will maintain per-pupil funding so that schools seeing a growth in numbers will receive a corresponding increase in their budgets.

But the Tory proposal fails to take into account the rise in national insurance payments and pension contributions that schools will have to meet out of their existing budgets, as well as mandated pay increases. And it does not account for the erosion of inflation over the next five years.

Labour says it would protect overall schools budgets from the effects of inflation, and that it would safeguard not just funding for four- to 16-year-olds – which the Conservatives have ringfenced – but also include post-16 students at sixth-form and further education colleges.

However, Labour’s proposals take no account of the significant rise in pupil numbers expected over the coming parliament, nor do they relieve the costs of national insurance, pensions and pay on school budgets. If inflation remains very low, the Tory offer may actually be more generous.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies – after looking at pre-election spending proposals by the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats – concluded schools would see a real-terms reduction of at least 7% per child by 2020, no matter who won next month’s general election.

Adding in the effect of rising pension contributions, national insurance payments and wage increases, the real-terms reduction could be up to 12%.

What the leadership of the NUT hopes is that an incoming Labour government will take a second look at school funding and feel freer to find more money in its first autumn statement. If it fails to do so, the NUT will proceed with its ballot and – based on the combative mood in Harrogate – go ahead even without support from its fellow teaching trade union, the more moderate NASUWT (National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers).

Before then, schools are facing up to the possibility of several years before their budgets improve.

The effects could be brutal. Calculations by the Leeds Schools Forum found state schools in England will need to find annual savings of more than £1bn – the equivalent of more than 20,000 full-time teaching posts – to balance their budgets in coming years.

The forum estimated that the combined effect of increases in national insurance, pension contributions, wages and inflation will eat away £378m from budgets in 2015-16, rising to £1.1bn from 2016-17.

A typical state secondary school would have to find more than £200,000 a year in extra pension and national insurance contributions alone.

 

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