Positive thinking

Janet Lord, Manchester Metropolitan University Recent changes to school funding in England mean that, although there may seem to be more money for education, in general schools will be worse off in 2021 than they have been over the last few years. In the second half of 2019, the government announced a £14 billion increase in funding for schools in England. This is over three years: £2.6 billion in 2020-21, increasing to £4.8 billion in 2021-22 and £7.1 billion in 2022-23. The National Education Union (NEU) analysed the figures , and despite the cash injection, found “a strong link between deprivation and the scale of government cuts to school funding”. The NEU suggests that, when inflation is taken into account, over 16,000 schools will have less income in April 2020, compared to 2015. Over the past decade, school spending per pupil in the UK has fallen by about 8% in real terms. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies , this is the largest decline since at lea...

Chris Rolph, Nottingham Trent University Hundreds of headteachers from schools across the country marching on Downing Street is not something you see very often. But many school leaders feel compelled to take drastic action over the issue of school funding. Headteachers are not normally a militant group – they tend to spend their working days encouraging others to conform. But lack of money has caused them to take to the streets. For several years now headteachers, principals and CEOs of multi-academy trusts have been calling for adequate and fairer funding for their schools. At first glance it might seem their cries have been answered: government ministers and DfE officials repeatedly state that “there is more money going into our schools than ever before”. And, with total school funding set to rise to more than £40 billion by 2020, you might wonder what heads have got to complain about. Funding is of course only half the story, as expenses are also increasing. The Df...