Schools threaten three-day week to cut costs
Plans to reduce spending in face of rising energy bills and salary increases may cut down class time
SCHOOL leaders are considering threeor four-day weeks to pay for teacher pay rises and crippling energy costs, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.
Head teachers, trustees and governors are holding “crisis meetings” in the summer break to work out how to keep schools afloat in the autumn term.
Teacher pay rises planned for September will squeeze budgets and energy costs are tipped to rise by up to 300 per cent. Mark Jordan, chief executive of Creative Education Trust, a multi-academy trust with 17 schools across the East and West Midlands and Norfolk, said he had heard discussions of a “three-day week” to save on costs.
He said his trust, which holds 13,500 pupils, is considering a recruitment freeze and may have to scrap Covid catch-up programmes and planned investments in school buildings. He added: “Others less fortunate are facing significant deficits and are already planning for teacher redundancies.”
Dr Robin Bevan, headmaster of
Southend High School for Boys in Essex, a top grammar school in the country, said: “If a four-day week is not already being planned, it will certainly be being considered” by some schools. He added: “In the absence of long overdue above-inflation investment in school funding, it’ll become a realistic prospect sooner rather than later.”
The chief executive of one of the country’s largest academy trusts, who did not want to be named, said “shorter school days, fewer after-school clubs and enrichment opportunities and draconian restrictions on energy usage will become a reality for all trusts, and the situation is particularly challenging for smaller trusts and standalone schools”.
They added: “This is not a plaintive plea of poverty. Nor is it the usual begging bowl moment ahead of a spending review – this is serious stuff.”
Schools have faced considerable financial pressures in recent years, with funding per pupil in England falling by 9 per cent between 2010 and 2020 in real terms. The Government has committed an extra £7 billion for school budgets in England by 2024, with the aim of bringing spending per pupil back to 2010 levels. But the Institute for Fiscal Studies said that in 2024, spending per pupil will be 3 per cent below 2010 levels in real terms after factoring in a rise in costs. Dr Bevan said his school was only able to operate last year by dipping into its limited reserves. While the school is set to receive £300,000 more in income, its utility costs have risen by £200,000, teacher pay costs will be £70,000 more than it had budgeted and it has to pay support staff £40,000 more than anticipated.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders said headteachers, trustees and governors were holding “crisis meetings” over the holidays to work out how to fund increased costs. Some are said to be planning for cuts to maintenance work, classroom resources such as text books and extra-curricular activities.
Mr Barton said a head of trust had said they need to make £877,000 of savings. He said: “How do you try and think about those kinds of savings? One is you increase class sizes so you have fewer teachers, or you cut courses that have got small numbers... Or the other way of doing it is you simply identify members of support staff, teaching assistants and you say you can’t afford them.”
A spokesman for the Department for Education said: “Our schools white paper set out our expectation that the school week should last a minimum of 32.5 hours – the current average – for all mainstream state-funded schools.
“Thousands of schools already deliver this length of week within existing budgets and we expect current funding plans to account for this.”