Teach Secondary 13.7

FUNDING THIS WAY! JuliaHarnden, Funding Specialist at ASCL, shares her thoughts on the current state of schools funding, and the steps that government and schools can take to start turning things round... Are we in an unprecedentedmoment where school funding is concerned? I don’t necessarily think it’s one-of-a- kind – there are layers to it. School leaders are past masters at being creative with the funding they’ve got, but what we’re seeing now is that it’s becoming harder to make decisions around saving and creating efficiencies that don’t impact upon curriculum delivery, and thus pupil outcomes. At the same time, we’ve seen increases in the number of pupils requiring SEND support in both mainstream and special schools, in ways that I feel are unprecedented. Additional money has been put into SEND and high needs, but it hasn’t kept pace with the growth in demand, nor the rising costs of delivery. As survey data fromASCL has shown [see panel on p55], class sizes have increased, alongside reductions in pastoral staff and the number of TAs. We’ve become used to hearing about those issues – but combine themwith that growing demand for SEND support, and the outlook isn’t good. What should government, schools and local authorities prioritise when addressing those issues relating to SEND demand? We need to make sure we first understand, where mainstream schools are concerned, what that provision should look like, and then decide how muchmoney those schools should be given to provide inclusive education. We’re seeing delivery models being driven by financial constraints. Before this year’s general election, there had been a national SEND improvement plan that included some laudable aims – but without any specific funding having been attached to it, it’s difficult to see how those laudable aims were ever going to effect change within classrooms. Schools are very clear as to what’s expected of them, and the funding required to fulfil those expectations, so there’s lots we can do – but we need to move away from trying to determine what good practice looks like according to the funding constraints of the moment. Playing catch-up Given where we are following the events of recent years, and with a relatively new government in place, what actions are you calling for on the part of policymakers?What levers should they be pulling? One of our priorities would be to tackle child poverty. Do that, and you’ll ensure that the most vulnerable in our society are properly cared for, which would feed through and make things better for everybody. From a funding perspective, one of our asks from this year’s autumn statement is to restore school funding to the point when it was last commonly agreed to be acceptable and sustainable, which we’ve identified as being 2010 levels. Successive governments have insisted that funding levels in the years since have met, or even exceeded those of 2010, but there are reasons to doubt that. One is the way in which governments have calculated inflation using very broad inflationmeasures, which we don’t think reflect the rate at which school costs have increased. Our costs have raced ahead, while we’re still playing catch-up. We would want to see those numbers in real terms, according to real school costs. There are also huge deficits building up across different local authorities. Cumulative deficits are calculated to exceed £3 billion by next March, with some of the money available from the core schools education budget disappearing into these ‘black holes’ of of deficit recovery. If government were to eradicate those deficits, it would pump muchmore of that available money into all settings, mainstream and special schools alike, and down to the frontline. That would be a huge step forward. Is there enough recognition and discussion at policymaking level of the gaps between the funding schools receive and the costs they have to cover? It’s all very well examining national averages and concluding that, say, 60% of available funding ‘tends’ to be spent on teachers, 20% on support staff, some on premises and so forth. We understand why, from a government perspective, they’d want to look at the numbers in that way. By definition, however, if you’re Finding the FUNDING | BUDGETING | PROCUREMENT School improvement advice for headteachers and SLT 53 teachwire.net/secondary L E A D E R S H I P