Every school to lose 6 teachers in savage cuts
EVERY secondary school faces losing six teachers while primaries could be forced to shed two as brutal Tory cuts bite, a report reveals.
The study by the Education Policy Institute, an independent think tank, comes after the Mirror revealed schools face the worst funding cuts in 20 years.
It says the impact of “large real terms per pupil cuts of between 6% and 11% by 2019-20” amounts to an average loss of £74,000 per primary and £291,000 per secondary school.
Labour says it shows the Tories are breaking another manifesto promise, to protect funding for pupils. And children in poorer areas will suffer most.
The looming crisis is so serious that angry Tory MPs could force Theresa May into another humiliating U-turn.
Conservatives fear funding formula changes due to be ushered in by Education Minister Justine Greening in September could be catastrophic.
The effect of these changes would be on top of the cuts already highlighted by the Mirror, based on a Whitehall predicted £3billion loss of funds by 2020, inflation and a rising school population of 467,265 since 2009.
The EPI add: “It equates to, on average, the loss of almost two teachers across all primary schools and six teachers across all secondary schools.”
This would add up to 33,800 teachers in 16,923 primary and 19,608 teachers in 3,268 secondary schools in England.
For example, two schools from Channel 4’s Educating series would lose between 13 and 20 teachers. Passmores Academy in Harlow, with 1,036 pupils, which featured in 2011, would lose £764,580. That is equivalent to £738 per pupil and could force education chiefs to fire 20 teachers.
The Educating Yorkshire school, Thornhill Community Academy in Dewsbury, faces losing 13 teachers.
The teachers and pupils, who starred in the 2013 series, will lose an estimated £533,918 – or of £661 per pupil – by 2019.
But, as parents know too well, schools are already cutting back.
The top flight Altrincham Grammar School for Boys, Greater Manchester, where Stone Roses frontman Ian Brown studied, is axing its music A-level, along with German and Latin courses.
Headmaster Tim Gartside said: “As education budgets are cut, it is often the extra-curricular opportunities and subjects which attract smaller pupil numbers that get squeezed first.”
School bosses may have to start asking parents for donations to plug gaps.
The proposed national funding formula change is due to make things far worse for kids in the least well off areas because it will move cash away from them to better off areas. The change is designed to stop inequalities where schools with similar numbers of children, receive different levels of cash per-pupil. But the Department for Education will not increase the overall budget, so more cash for some means taking away funds from others and big cities will suffer most as outer area schools prosper. The EPI report says: “The
This is no way to run our state education. We need a levelling up, not down KEVIN COURTNEY NATIONAL UNION OF TEACHERS GENERAL SECRETARY
Devastating scale of teacher cull is exposed
Secondaries hit the worst.. 2 go at primaries
Budgets down by 11% with poor bearing brunt
overall impact of redistributing the schools budget results in shifting funding away from the most disadvantaged pupils towards the ‘just about managing’ group.”
Primary and secondary schools where less than 30% of pupils receive free school meals stand to gain £275million.
Many of these schools have “very low levels of disadvantage”, says the EPI.
But “pupils who live in the least deprived areas experience the highest relative gains”.
Without budget cuts, less well off chil- dren are already under-performing, compared with those from wealthier backgrounds, according to a Government Social Mobility study.
The formula change comes as inflation is set to eat away at frozen budgets.
The Institute says there “are unlikely to be any schools in England to avoid a cut per pupil by 2019-20, even in areas benefiting from the new formula”.
Education Policy Institute director Natalie Perera said: “Financial pressures mean all schools in England are set to experience real terms per pupil cuts in spending over the next three years, even after the new formula is introduced.”
EPI Chairman David Laws, an Education Minister in the Conservative Lib Dem Government, said while a new funding formula “is long overdue... the Government may receive little credit as even the schools benefiting from the new formula have their gains completely wiped out”.
National Union of Teachers General Secretary Kevin Courtney said: “This is no way to run our state education. We need a levelling up, not down” Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner said: “Less than two years ago the Tories promised millions of parents that they would protect the money spent per pupil. “This report shows that it is yet another manifesto promise they are breaking.” VOICE OF MIRROR: PAGE 10