Schools: What counts as 'fairness' and what counts as 'funding'

Nobody. But the issues are what counts as “fairness” and what counts as “funding”.

On fairness, the last coalition government, under Liberal Democrat pressure, increased the allowances for school deprivation from 35 per cent higher for the most deprived to 42 per cent. This reflected the pupil premium policy.

What our MP is proposing is a retreating from this progressive policy with a strain towards equality. Is it fair to reduce the premium paid to the most deprived to improve the position of the less deprived?

It depends whether you consider the most needy to be the most deserving or not. Is taking from the schools in Bradford, now in line to take more Syrian refugees, a fair or sensible policy?

On funding, Steward Brennan is right (D&S Times, Sept 9). There is the same pupil funding formula for the maintained and non maintained sectors. But there are other elements to the schools’ budgets that favour academies and free schools, namely, additional allowances for administrative costs, such as admissions, that duplicate local education authority provision. Then there are start up costs for land purchase, rents and capital equipment, that are often costly, giving advantage to the non maintained sector.

The newspapers reported that the first year cost of a new academy school in Westminster in 2014 averaged out at £900,000 per student, while capital spending in the maintained sector has been cut.

The Local Government Association estimates the funding differential as £720 per pupil in favour of academies. The Treasury has a relaxed “light touch” approach to academy school spending compared to that in the maintained sector.

Funding for 16 to 19 year olds and further education have seen realterms cuts of about 14 per cent. The Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and the Local Government Association, speaking for the maintained sector, have warned of the dire consequences facing local maintained schools.

For many schools the most pressing problem is that as pupil numbers increase by seven per cent (from 2016-2020), budgets and teachers pay are being constrained. School running costs are likely to rise by 11 per cent from 2014 to 2020. As in the NHS, this creates a perfect storm, which in schools is leading to a teacher recruitment crisis.

From November 2013-14, 49,120 teachers left the profession, an increase of 3,480 on previous years.

Returning teachers are not filling the gap. Applications to teach are down 21,000 in the same period.

Recruitment agencies are touring the world trying to attract the extra 160,000 teachers needed by 2018.

Adjusting the deprivation allowance to the detriment of inner city school is not going to help deal with schools problems – but it is a useful distraction away for the real and growing pressures upon teachers and our schools.

Dr John Gibbins, Sowerby, Thirsk