While the country has basked in a week of sunshine, the storm clouds have been gathering over the future of our education system.
Once again the issue of funding - or the lack of it - has risen to the top of the agenda, with a report on Monday saying that the school teachers’ pay review body has recommended a settlement of close to 4 per cent for 2025-26.
The government, in its evidence to the pay review body, had proposed a teacher pay award of 2.8 per cent, with the ominous observation that most schools would need to find “efficiencies” even to meet this figure.
If the actual pay award is a percentage point higher, then those “efficiencies” will cut even deeper unless there is additional money - something Downing Street was quick to rule out.
Competitive pay for teachers
Let’s be clear that the pay review body’s reported recommendation is much closer to what is needed than the 2.8 per cent proposed by the government.
Teachers deserve a fair settlement for an increasingly challenging job, and the system needs wages to be competitive to address the recruitment and retention crisis.
The pay review body appears to have done its job - coolly looking at the evidence and recommending an appropriate pay award.
However, it is utterly self-defeating for the government to refuse to give schools the money they need to afford to pay that award to their teachers.
The only possible outcome of this madness can be further cuts to provision.
The dire funding situation for schools
There is no shortage of evidence that the financial situation in many schools and trusts is already dire.
Last month a poll showed that half of secondary schools in England have been forced to cut staff this year due to financial pressures. Many have had to reduce subject choice, spending on school trips and extracurricular activities, while an increasing number are using pupil premium money to plug gaps.
“State schools are overwhelmed with financial pressures and many are rapidly heading towards breaking point,” said Nick Harrison, chief executive of education charity the Sutton Trust.
They’ll certainly be heading in that direction more quickly if they are landed with a largely unfunded pay award.
And remember that this is on top of a pay offer of 3.2 per cent for school support staff as well as shortfalls in government funding for increased national insurance costs.
There are also repercussions for colleges. They negotiate pay separately and will be hard-pushed, on even more parlous funding levels, to match nearly 4 per cent.
This is a long-standing problem, with the pay of further education college teachers increasingly falling behind that of school teachers over the past decade. It is a situation that totally contradicts the oft-stated aspirations of successive governments to initiate a skills revolution.
More from Pepe Di’Iasio:
Let’s deal with the fantasy that these financial challenges can be dealt with by “efficiencies”. The truth is that every budget line was cut to the bone and beyond long ago, and “efficiencies” simply means more cuts.
All of this feels completely at odds with Labour’s “opportunity mission” - to break the link between a child’s background and their future success. It will not be possible to achieve that laudable objective while simultaneously presiding over further cuts to school and college budgets.
Good intentions are not enough. They have to be backed up with the resources required to make them a reality.
It is customary at this point to acknowledge the very real and competing pressures on the public purse.
Labour ministers will no doubt remind us of the budgetary black hole they inherited from the Conservatives. We’ll be told of the necessity of fixing the foundations of the economy so that the country is in a good position to grow in the future. And then there’s the matter of shoring up our military spending in the face of global tensions. The first duty of government is, after all, to keep the country safe.
Bitter pill to swallow
But, my word, it is an awfully bitter pill to swallow if this means that we have to starve our education system - our children and young people - of the resources they need to thrive.
It also feels completely counterproductive. Education is part of the essential foundations of a successful society and economy. Aren’t we currently in danger of undermining those foundations rather than fixing them?
And so I would urge the prime minister and chancellor to think very carefully before they plunge schools and colleges into a spiral of further financial decline.
I am sure this is not what their voters want to see, nor what the country needs.
These are difficult times. But it is the job of government to make the right choices and priorities. I urge ministers to do that now and support schools, colleges and staff.
Pepe Di’Iasio is general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders
For the latest education news and analysis delivered every weekday morning, sign up for the Tes Daily newsletter
