ASCL, my professional association issued an open invitation to members to submit contributions – they had to be lucid, polite and no more than 500 words – and the results have just been published I think. I have not read any of the articles, though I can predict the content of many, and of course no one was to know that when the invitation was issued there would then be five (yes five!) Education Secretaries by the time that the results came out. At one time in the summer I started referring to ‘Education Secretary O’clock whenever students asked me the time, as they seemed to be changing daily. Such are the turbulent political seas through which we have been making our recent passage.
My best guess is that the majority of those articles, written by heads, bursars and senior staff from educational institutions across the UK will have focused on funding. There will have been many other critical areas of importance too, for example the ‘forgotten third’ of students nationally, standards, buildings, curricula, mental health and inspection, but I think that funding will have underpinned all of that. You can’t necessarily sort problems by simply throwing money at them, but you can guarantee that they won’t go away if you don’t underpin the system with fair, transparent and adequate funds. I saw some analysis at the weekend that suggested that two decades ago Health and Education were more or less on level pegging when it came to funding. Current figures show that Health (at £168 billion) is roughly double Education (at £77 billion) – and sadly public opinion seems to mirror that change in weighting. I think that’s a worrying trend; politicians and economists always insist that one of the ways that economic growth is built in to an economy’s future is by investing in Education.
Now, of course, it does look like the pendulum is swinging yet again towards austerity and public services are likely to be in the firing line yet again to fill that big black hole. We already have a disparity between the funds allocated (3%) and the pay rise recommended for teachers (5%), and inflation and energy costs are hitting schools and colleges in the same way as we are all feeling the pinch at home. It looks tough, and it will be tough to balance the budgets to come for the coming years as every additional 1% on the salaries bill for a school the size of Bishop’s represents around £65,000.
The frustration is that our school is otherwise in fine fettle. Bishop’s is bigger than ever, results stronger than ever, extra-curricular expanding rapidly post-Covid and a new building on the horizon too. We just need financial stability, security and sufficiency to make everything work for our amazing boys and girls. Let’s Ms Keegan and Messrs Gibb and Halfon can bring some influence to bear to make the difference…
SDS
