Category Archives: School funding

Cold, damp, unsafe: record number of UK schools refused funding for repairs

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DfE allocates £450m to 826 building projects at 733 schools, a fall of almost 60% – in terms of total projects – compared with 2020-21

A record number of schools have had bids for building repairs turned down by the government, with experts warning that buckets on desks, freezing classrooms and power cuts are all becoming commonplace.

The Department for Education (DfE) announced on Tuesday that it had allocated £450m to 826 building repair projects at 733 schools through its annual condition improvement fund (CIF), which is designed to help academies and small academy trusts keep buildings “safe and in good working order”. But this is a fall of nearly 60% – in terms of total projects – compared with 2020-21, when the government awarded £563m to 2,104 repair projects.

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‘Daylight robbery’: two in five UK teachers work 26 hours for free each week

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TUC survey finds teaching staff perform the most unpaid overtime of any profession, losing out on £15,000 a year each

Teaching unions have accused ministers of “daylight robbery” after a new survey by the Trades Union Congress revealed that teachers perform the most unpaid overtime of any profession.

The TUC survey – published to mark its Work Your Proper Hours Day on Friday – found that two out of five teaching staff in the UK worked 26 hours for free each week, for a combined 5.5m hours a year.

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‘Deliberate lie’: education lobby group says ‘landmark’ school agreement falls short of 100% funding

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Federal and WA state governments’ public school funding deal dismissed as ‘not good enough’ by Australian Education Union

Education experts say a “landmark” deal to fully fund Western Australia’s public schools by 2026 is “not good enough” and still lets the state government “off the hook”.

The “statement of intent”, announced on Wednesday by education minister, Jason Clare, would increase funding for Western Australian public schools by $1.6bn over the next five years, with $770m coming from the commonwealth.

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Loose language leaves Labour accused of flip-flop on private schools

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Shadow ministers used ‘charitable status’ as shorthand for main goal of introducing tax changes

Has Labour flip-flopped on stripping private schools in England of their charitable status? Senior party figures from Keir Starmer down have certainly been guilty of using loose language, conflating such a move with their plan to apply VAT to private school fees and other tax breaks.

Starmer said in July last year: “When I say we are going to pay for kids to catch up at school, I also say it’ll be funded by removing private schools’ charitable status.”

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Revealed: covert deal to cut help for pupils in England with special needs

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Government contract aims to reduce the number of specialist care plans by a fifth

The government has quietly signed a contract targeting 20% cuts to the number of new education plans for children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send) to bring down costs, the Observer can reveal.

Then junior education minister Claire Coutinho – recently promoted to the cabinet as energy secretary– subsequently told MPs that no targets were in place.

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More English schools could close due to crumbling concrete, minister warns

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Nick Gibb says buildings continue to be surveyed for risk of collapse after over 100 were told to shut

The schools minister has warned more schools in England could face closure after more than 100 were told to shut just days before term starts for thousands of pupils.

The government has refused to publicly reveal the 104 education facilities that have been told to shut buildings due to the presence of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC), a material at risk of collapse.

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Striking teachers in England accused of undermining pupils’ pandemic recovery

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Gillian Keegan says she ‘can’t think of a worse time’ for action by NEU members

The education secretary, Gillian Keegan, has accused striking teachers of undermining children’s recovery from the Covid pandemic, saying she did “pretty well” at winning extra funding for schools from the Treasury.

Keegan told a conference in Bournemouth: “Let me be clear, we should not be having these strikes in general, but certainly not now. Children have been through so much in the pandemic and I can’t think of a worse time to be willingly keeping them out of school.”

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Labour considering graduate-led nurseries to fight inequality

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Exclusive: Bridget Phillipson says early-years education key to improving life chances

More graduate teachers would be parachuted into nurseries under plans being considered by Labour to improve education for under-fours, the Guardian has learned.

There could also be more nursery places in primary school settings as the opposition works up proposals to drive up standards and formally integrate early years into the English education system.

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One in three young teachers in England skipping meals to make ends meet

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NEU survey also finds one in five teachers aged 29 or under have taken on a second job as pay fails to keep up with cost of living

One in three young teachers in England are skipping meals and spending less on food because their pay has failed to keep up with the rising cost of living, while others are taking second jobs, a survey has found.

More than 8,000 state school teachers in England contacted by the National Education Union revealed that 34% of teachers aged 29 or younger said they have been forced to skip meals to make ends meet, with one in five saying they have taken on a second job in addition to teaching full-time.

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Labour pledges to overhaul England’s school ratings with ‘report card’

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Shadow education secretary to announce policy aimed at giving parents more information than Ofsted’s current system

School ratings such as outstanding and inadequate would be scrapped in England under a Labour government and replaced with a “report card” aimed at helping parents, the shadow education secretary is to announce.

Bridget Phillipson will tell a headteachers’ conference in Birmingham on Saturday that Ofsted’s current system of ratings “is high stakes for staff but low information for parents” because it fails to convey important details about a school’s strengths and weaknesses.

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Services in England for children with special needs to be ‘transformed’

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Government’s long-awaited plan promises thousands more specialist school places and new national standards

Services for children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send) in England are to be “transformed”, with the introduction of new national standards and thousands more specialist school places, ministers have announced.

The long-awaited changes are being introduced to end the postcode lottery that families currently face and ensure that children and young people with Send get “high-quality, early support” wherever they live, the government says.

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Gillian Keegan says teachers don’t need to threaten strikes

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Education secretary says she looks forward to ‘de-escalation’ as unions in England ballot over industrial action

The education secretary has made a veiled plea for teachers in England to “de-escalate” and avoid industrial action, arguing that progress can be made on pay and other concerns without the threat of “harmful” strikes.

All four major teaching unions in England are balloting their members on possible strike action over pay, with the National Education Union and NASUWT saying that the pay rise given in September – about 5% on average – is inadequate given rampant inflation and the cost of living crisis.

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Art, drama, languages and geography to become ‘preserve of private schools’ as state sector cuts bite

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Subjects that attract fewer pupils at GCSE and A-level are in danger of being axed from English state schools

Subjects including German, French, art, drama and design technology could soon be shut off to many state school students as heads say they are being forced into cutting expensive and less popular lessons to address crippling deficits.

The vast majority of English state schools expect to be in the red by the next school year, pushed under by enormous energy bills and an unfunded pay rise for teachers.

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Thousands of English schools in grip of funding crisis plan redundancies

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‘Unprecedented’ deficits will force heads to make ‘catastrophic’ cuts and reduce support for vulnerable pupils, NAHT warns

Thousands of schools in England are drawing up plans to make staff redundant in the face of a crippling funding crisis, and in many cases will also have to cut mental health support and Covid catch-up tuition, according to findings from one of the largest surveys of school leaders in recent times.

Two-thirds (66%) of the 11,000 school leaders who took part in the poll by the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) said they will have to make teaching assistants redundant or reduce their hours, while half (50%) are looking at cutting the number of teachers or teaching hours as they grapple with rising costs.

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UK headteachers in tears at stark choice: cut staff or feed hungry pupils

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School leaders’ mood turns to despair at funding crisis amid growing poverty

Jonny Uttley, CEO of the Education Alliance academy trust, which runs seven schools in Hull and the East Riding of Yorkshire, was shouting and swearing at the television news on Wednesday evening. The fracking vote in the Commons had descended into noisy chaos, with allegations that Tory backbenchers were being manhandled into voting with Liz Truss’s ailing government.

The contrast between the Westminster circus and what was happening in his primary and secondary schools couldn’t have been starker. Earlier, Uttley had met his headteachers to make an impossible choice: should they cut vital teaching staff or feed hungry children who weren’t entitled to free school meals.

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Headteachers fight for funds to shore up England’s dilapidated classrooms

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Hundreds of schools are queueing for cash to replace leaky roofs and failing heating. Yet each year only 50 will get money to rebuild

When it rains, the pupils at Wales high school, south Yorkshire, know to look out for numerous obstacles as they move around the building - buckets, lots of buckets.

“On a rainy day, it’s commonplace to see a dozen buckets around the school,” said headteacher Pepe Di’Iasio. “You can’t do anything long term. We’re just patching over the roof and doing the various things that we can. We have flat roofs, asbestos throughout the place and an old energy system that uses heavy amounts. We have a building that we heat up every day and the heating goes straight up out of the roof.”

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Victorian public schools face $20bn funding shortfall, analysis shows

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Private schools will be overfunded by almost $400m, but public schools will fall short of national standards

Victoria’s public schools face a dire funding shortfall of almost $20bn, with new analysis revealing funding growth for private schools is five times higher than for the state’s government schools.

Analysis from public schools advocacy group Save Our Schools shows that combined federal and state funding for government schools from 2019 to 2029 would be about $19.5bn below the Gonski review’s recommended funding benchmark – the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS).

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‘I feel I’ve come home’: can forest schools help heal refugee children?

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They have a middle-class reputation, but one outdoor school near Nottingham is reconnecting disadvantaged 10-year-olds with nature and a sense of freedom

When Kate Milman was 21, she paused her English degree at the University of East Anglia to join protests against the Newbury bypass. It was 1996, and the road was being carved out through idyllic wooded countryside in Berkshire. She took up residence in a treehouse, in the path of the bulldozers, and lived there for months. It was a revelation. She lived intimately with the catkins, the calling birds, the slow-slow-fast change in the seasons. Despite being in a precarious position as a protester, she felt completely safe and her brain was calmed.

“You know when you go camping and go back to your house, and everything feels wrong? The lighting is harsh and everything seems complicated indoors. It just got under my skin, this feeling – that [living in the woods] is like being at home.”

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Secret report reveals government fear of schools chaos after no-deal Brexit

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Risk of axed exams and food shortages, while informing the public ‘may cause panic’

Schools may have to close, exams could be disrupted and fresh food for pupils’ meals could run short because of panic buying with prices soaring by up to 20%, according to a secret Department for Education analysis of the risks of a no-deal Brexit obtained by the Observer.

The five-page document – marked “Official Sensitive” and with the instruction “Do Not Circulate” – also raises the possibility of teacher absences caused by travel disruption, citing schools in Kent as particularly at risk.

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