Governors and trustees take action to urge investment in education

Governors and trustees of schools across England are taking action to ask the government to urgently invest in education.

Co-ordinated by the National Governance Association (NGA), governors and trustees from over 120 constituencies are taking part in Funding the Future action which includes a lobby of Parliament (28 February), and other action which aims to set out the scale and severity of their concerns and to share their experience of making difficult decisions about how to spend their budget.

Over three-quarters of respondents to the NGA's 2018 school governance survey said that they cannot manage the funding pressures they face without adversely impacting the quality of education they provide to pupils.

Governors and trustees are increasingly reporting the damaging decisions that they have to make in order to balance their school’s budget including cutting the number of teaching and support staff, reducing the curriculum offer and not spending money on essential repairs to school buildings.

According to the Institute of Fiscal Studies, total school spending per pupil has fallen by 8% in real terms between 2009-10 and 2017-18. With a comprehensive spending review due later in 2019, NGA has set out nine asks for the government to meet in order to properly fund schools: these would require the government to increase education spending by a minimum of £3.5 billion per year.

Emma Knights, chief executive of the National Governance Association, said:

“Governors and trustees are committed to giving pupils in their school the best possible educational experience, but instead of deciding how they can best invest in children, they are having to decide what to take away from them. Each school has a unique experience of the effects of funding pressures but what unites governors and trustees is immediate and long-term concerns about the damage being caused to education at a time when there are more pupils than ever and when more and more is being asked of schools, including to care for a growing number of children with high-needs.

Increased school funding at all stages of education from early years to 16-19 is essential, not an optional extra, and a failure to invest in children and young people now is a failure by the government to give the next generation the education and opportunities that they deserve.”