Funding crisis will leave record 400 schools in debt by end of the year, education chief warns
ALMOST 400 schools will end this year in the red — the highest number ever, it emerged yesterday.
News of the deficits came as Gavin Boyd, chief executive of the Education Authority (EA), warned that the financial resources needed to provide school transport, maintenance and support for special educational needs were disappearing fast.
The EA has a budget of just over £1.8bn, with two-thirds of that figure allocated to schools.
Mr Boyd painted the bleak financial picture to principals during a series of recent meetings.
The EA chief said that in real terms there had been a 10% reduction in the education budget in the last seven years.
As a result the school’s budget has fallen behind the rate of inflation in the last decade.
Overall it means that the education system will face a £350m gap in funding by 2020 if it does not receive more money.
By that time, the EA said it would require £2.19bn to meet the demands of schools.
Almost 400 schools will finish 2017-2018 in the red — a 27% rise from last year.
These will collectively owe around £50m.
More schools (620) will stay in budget than those in financial difficulty, but 2017-2018 will be the first year ever that school deficits will outnumber school surpluses.
School budget allocation is largely dependent on the amount of pupils, but some receive additional money if they are small or in socially deprived areas. About 80% of the budgets, however, are spent on staff wages.
“Put simply, we do not have enough money to fund education as currently structured. In my view, the situation is going to get worse over the next few years,” Mr Boyd said.
“Education is fundamentally important to our young people, our community and our economy. We want to encourage everyone to participate in a well-informed debate about what we need from our education system to prepare our young people for the future and how we might resource that system.”
Mr Boyd (below) also revealed that spending on support for special educational needs had risen by £41m between 2014 and 2017.
The DUP’s Peter Weir, a former Education Minister, said:
“This demonstrates a problem that we have been highlighting for some time, namely problems around funding within education. However, the refusal by Sinn Fein to restore the Executive prevents action being taken to prevent these issues.”
Karen Mullan, Sinn Fein spokesperson on education, said: “Children should not have to pay the price for Tory-DUP austerity, and if schools are saying they do not have the necessary resources, then that needs to be heeded.”
Ulster Unionist Party education spokesperson Rosemary Barton said that the financial plight of schools had been ignored for too long.
She added: “While we have received this warning of the funding gap, questions must be asked as to what options are being put in place to resolve the issues. Have any savings been identified?”
Alliance MLA Chris Lyttle called for a long-term reform plan. He said: “The CEO of the EA has suggested that in the absence of radical investment or reform, our education system will be unfit for purpose for the 21st century.”
“This should shock everyone in our society and be enough to mobilise public support and demand for the necessary reform to deliver high quality education.”
The SDLP’s Colin McGrath said: “The strain placed on classrooms across the North is now becoming unbearable and it will result in poorer outcomes for children, predominantly those from poorer backgrounds.”