Action on school funding and staffing crisis needs your support

Slide from presentation at Brent governors' meeting with Brent senior officers

 Brent schools, which out-perform other schools nationally, are going to have to fight to maintain their position in the future as a result of cuts to their budgets and a crisis in the recruitment and retention of teachers and senior staff including headteachers.

Although changes to the national funding formula have been delayed, the eventual changes will be to the detriment of urban areas, unless the whole national education budget is increased. This seems unlikely as there is zero growth at the moment which means a cut in real terms as funding does not make up for rises in national insurance payments, pension contributions, price inflation and an increase in pupil numbers.  Increasingly schools have to 'buy in' services that were previously supplied by the council.

The crisis in recruitment and retention is due to  number of factors of which the main ones are the constant changes in curriculum and assessment introduced by the government and the high cost of housing in London LINK. The latter means that when young teachers start a family they have to move out of London to find an affordable place to live.

One way Brent Council could tackle this is by planning more affordable social housing for key workers such as teachers and national health workers.

School governing bodies are finding it very difficult to recruit headteachers in the present climate as the job becomes harder as a result of high stakes expectations from Ofsted and the government. Primary schools have expanded in size as a result of the government not allowing local authorities to build new schools where they are needed.  Managing a large school is more akin to being a chief executive of a large organisation and many prospective heads see this as moving away from the 'leading educator' role that was their impetus to join the profession.

Most Brent primary schools have remained with the local authority rather than be tempted by the false delights of academisation but that means Brent Council has a job to do in championing its own schools as well as trying to positively change the context in which they work.  This was the subject of a recent motion at Brent Central Labour Party.

On Tuesday the London NUT will be holding a march and lobby on these issues and more and would welcome parents, carers and others concerned to join them.Assemble for March: 17:00, Whitehall, (Opposite Downing Street) Rally: 18:30, Emmanuel Centre, Marsham Street, SW1P 3DW

If you are interested in how your school will be impacted by cuts, which usually hit teaching assistants first, type the name of the school into the map below. Teacher assistants play a vital part in the progress of London primary school children and these days are often trained to teach small groups of children in intervention projects, enabling them to catch up with their peers. They are under-paid and sometimes under-valued. Nevertheless, they are a vital ingredient of Brent's success story.

London Councils calls for academy conversion cash to be used to level up school funding

London Councils' Executive member for children, skills and employment Cllr Peter John OBE has responded to the recent government announcement on academisation. He said:

Revoking the decision to force all schools to become academies is great news for London’s schools. They can now focus on improving their already enviable results at Key Stage 2 and GCSE, working in partnership with boroughs, parents and central government to offer London’s children the best quality education possible.

Money set aside to help schools convert – said to be around £500 million – should now be used to level up funding across the country, ensuring no child is disadvantaged by the introduction of a new national funding formula.

Meeting with London MPs as education funding cuts threaten London boroughs

The government's intention to move to a National Funding Formula for education and an overall freeze on spending despite rising pupil numbers and increased staffing costs means that London boroughs, including Brent, will face funding cuts in the near future.
Camden NUT has organised a meeting at Portcullis House on February 3rd to which they have invoted Tulip Siddiq MP, who also represents three Brent wards. Keir Starmer has already said he will attend and it would be good if Dawn Butler and Barry Gardiner also committed themselves to listen to the concerns. Brent could face a cut of 8.6% by 2019-20  and subsequent loss of jobs in schools.

This is the invitation letter:

London schools face unprecedented cuts over the next few years. In the Autumn Statement, George Osborne announced that education funding would be frozen despite a significant increase in student numbers and the introduction of a national funding formula. 

If the plans for a national funding formula advocated by many MPs and the f40 group are enacted this  will mean pupils in London schools will have the spending on their education cut dramatically, as  these changes coincide with other cuts in education spending and schools having to pay higher pension and national insurance contributions. 

These changes will be felt most acutely in the most deprived boroughs; however, funding is at risk in every London borough. 

 Overall funding for London schools could be cut by 13% over the next four years.  Schools have never faced cuts of this size before. Education spending has only been cut twice before in the mid-80s and the mid-90s by 4% and 3% respectively. The scale of these cuts will drag schools back to funding levels last seen in the 1990s.  There is a very effective and influential campaign advocating redistributing funding from London and other metropolitan boroughs largely to the shires as a way for those areas to deal with cuts to the education budget. We believe that we need a similarly effec tive campaign to argue that funding should be protected overall; that a national funding formula should properly recognise the true cost of educating large numbers of children from deprived backgrounds; and that the transition to a national funding formula should not force London schools to make significant cuts. 

We have arranged an initial planning meeting for local stakeholders with London MPs in Room R. Portcullis House at 5:30pm on Wednesday 3^rd February.

This is how the new formula would impact on schools in the London Borough of Brent LINK:

Current Individual School Budget 2015-16 £220,485,342
Current Individual School Budget if F40 revised formula applied £217,958,912
F40 budget adjusted for schools inflation 2-19-20 (Source IFS): £206,611,993
Overall budget reduction: £18,873,349
Spending per pupil 2015-16:  £5,371
Spending per pupil 2019-20:  £4,573 (cut of 8.6%)
Loss of teaching jobs 174 (cut of 7%)
Lost of teaching assistant jobs 349 (cut of 27%)

Other London boroughs are even worse off.
  
 Full documentation here: LINK