Poll finds funding cuts are impacting education standards

Almost one third of parents feel their children's education has been negatively impacted by school funding cuts, a poll from Parentkind has found.

The PTA charity asked respondents about the impact on students had been since schools having seen their budgets effectively cut by more than £12 billion since 2010.

Just over half (51 per cent) of parents felt that schools get a bad deal with governments deciding how much money to spend on public services.

The research was conducted online between 7-11 March amongst 1,000 parents in England with at least one child aged 4–18.

Forty six per cent of parents felt that the Chancellor’s announcement of a £3 billion increase in spending on schools in the Budget is not enough.

The survey also asked parents about where they stand on raising additional funding for schools.

It found that over two thirds of parents would support the decision to spend an extra £12 billion on schools in England to take budgets back to 2010 levels, even if this meant spending less on other areas or not reducing taxes.

When it comes to actions a government could take to raise additional money for schools, 3 in 4 parents (73%) would support a windfall tax, and two thirds (69%) would support increasing the 45p rate of Income Tax and a similar number (67% would support a one-off ​‘millionaires’ wealth tax. 6 in 10 (59%) would support equalising tax from capital gains to be the same as income from work.

3 in 4 parents agree that spending on school should be the top priority for any future government and 6 in 10 parents would support the government increasing spending on schools rather than reducing the tax they pay.