One of the promises the Labour Party made in the General Election of July 2024 was to tackle the crisis in education by employing 6,500 more teachers. Today, almost eight months after that election, schools and colleges are forced to make teachers and support staff redundant because they are not being allowed to go into deficit.

Fourteen years of austerity have had the effect of cutting school finances so that there are, in most schools, no further cuts to be made without starting to cut staff. The Government knows what the situation is in schools up and down the country. So what is their response to this crisis?

First, they are cutting the per pupil funding for schools and colleges for the year 2025/26, the first full year of the Labour Government control of education, to the lowest level it has been since 2010, the start of austerity brought in by George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Lib Dem/Conservative coalition government.

Second, they are proposing a pay increase of 2.8% for teachers from September 2025 but with no funding from Government. That is, schools and colleges have to fund this ‘pay award’ from their existing budgets. This forces schools and colleges to cut the funding for children and young people to fund a pay award for teachers. It is no wonder the largest teachers union, the National Education Union (NEU), is calling for a ballot of its members for official strike action against this ‘pay award’.

This is not the only problem facing the Government in Education. Data released last December shows the government has failed to meet its targets for recruitment into teacher training. There was a fall in recruitment to primary teacher training and the secondary figure fell by almost 40%! So the Government’s figure of 6,500 extra teachers begins to look unattainable without a major financial input into education and a serious attempt to cut the workload on teachers.

But there is more. Figures show that one in four new teachers is leaving within three years after starting teaching! Couple this with the latest data from the school census for 2023, which shows that for the first time nearly as many teachers left teaching in England as entered! If this continues, schools and colleges will have to reduce their provision with the effects that will have on the opportunities children and young people have in the future.

New education bill

Partly in response to these crises, the government has introduced a new bill. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, presently trundling through Parliament is a bit of a curate’s egg. It has positive points, and here I will only deal with the points related to education:

• that all teachers in academies will be subject to the School Teachers Pay and Conditions Document (STPCD) as all teachers in Local Authority (LA) schools are;
• all academies will have to follow the National Curriculum as all LA schools must;
• LAs will be able to build new schools in areas where needed;
• all staff designated as teachers have to be qualified as such or on a course that will allow them to be qualified;

But it also has many more negative parts:

• The CEOs and senior staff in academies will not have to follow the pay criteria in the STPCD. This is important because many academies and multi academy trusts (MATs) have raised the pay of their senior staff well above the levels set out in the STPCD. In fact the highest paid CEO is paid over £400,000 and that’s before ‘fringe benefits’ are included. This is important because it could lead to a flow of Head teachers to academies and affect Local Authority schools trying to recruit Head teachers. It is also significant because many academies and MATs are facing bankruptcy and one of the main causes is the salaries of the senior staff;
• It is proposed Teachers have a pay rise of 2.8% but, as mentioned, this has to be funded from the schools existing resources – the Labour Government will not contribute a penny to this pay rise;
• The power of determining the allocation of children and young people to schools in a LA area is still not returned to the LA. Therefore academies can continue to ignore the LA’s wishes and raise or lower their intake as they see fit. If there are falling rolls in a LA area academies can still keep their intake high rather than all schools reducing their intake;
• There are no proposals regarding under 5’s settings in the Bill or for post 16 institutions. These areas are non-statutory, which means LAs do not have to provide them as they do for primary and secondary education. These areas of education have already suffered more cuts than schools precisely because they are not statutory;
• There are no proposals to tackle the problem of assessment in a situation where children and young people in England are almost the most tested in the world. Nor are there proposals to take examinations out of the hands of the for-profit private companies who now control them. Schools and colleges must pay large sums to these examination boards because the Government makes it compulsory children and young people take these exams but forces schools to pay;
• There is a mushrooming of private special schools and PRUs which cost far more than LA provision and so provide a lucrative return for the owners. Why are there no measures in this Bill to control these institutions and bring them back under LA control?

We need a better national education plan

By any measure, the Labour Government’s response to the series of crises facing education in England is inadequate. There is no clear plan the Labour Government is implementing. Why is the partitioning of schools and colleges into academies and LA funded institutions being allowed to continue sat all? Why are all schools and colleges not being brought under the control of locally elected committees? Why isn’t the funding for all forms of education not being increased? Why are the creative arts being driven out of the school curriculum? Does the present curriculum prepare our children and young people for a life in the 21^st century?

These and other questions ought to be part of a national plan for education that a Labour Government should be implementing, but with Starmer and Reeves at the helm the chances of this happening are minimal.

[photo above is a protest by teachers, parents and local residents against school closures in Hackney]