Nearly 18,000 schools are facing real terms cuts, data shows

The School Cuts website has updated its data, showing that 17,942 schools are facing real terms cuts in funding per pupil.

This is 500 more than initially predicted and equals to nine out of 10 schools.

The unions responsible for the website looked at the core schools budget as it represents 75 per cent of school spending.

The schools block funding allocations for 2015 / 2016 were used as the baseline.

This gives the per pupil funding for every mainstream school. This was compared with the funding amounts from the Government’s illustration of the impact of the National Funding Formula that was released through the Department for Education’s COLLECT system (Collections Online for Learning, Education, Children and Teachers).

The Office for Budget Responsibility’s estimate for inflation for the period 2015 to 2020 has been taken into account and it was assumed that local schools’ forums would implement the National Funding Formula as the Government has recommended.

All the data is available at bit.ly/school_cuts_data_2017

By contrast, the figures quoted by the government use school budgets for 2017/18 as a baseline, presenting the picture in cash terms only and ignoring the impact of rising costs and inflation, say the unions.

Many other groups, including parents, school governors, and a delegation of more than 5,000 head teachers have been arguing for some time that school budgets are at breaking point. The school funding crisis is real. Funding increases need to be in real terms, not in cash terms.

Unions have welcomed the additional £1.3bn offered by the DfE in July but a recent Public Accounts Committee session heard that the efficiencies to free up this money have yet to be made.

The National Education Union (NEU) states that while the extra £1.3bn, which the DfE is reallocating from its existing budget, is welcome, it is short of what schools need if standards are to be preserved.

Only a fully-funded education system will deliver the equality of opportunity that school staff, parents, governors, school leaders and politicians are all so passionate about.

With this in mind, the unions involved in the schoolcuts.org.uk website are urging the Secretary of State to make a final representation to The Chancellor to announce more money for schools in the Budget.