Autumn Budget response
We were pleased to see the Chancellor make a substantial investment in education in the Autumn Budget. The £2.3 billion committed to schools, including £1 billion for SEND and £30 million for breakfast clubs, alongside £300 million to further education are crucial steps. We are also happy to see real-terms per-pupil spending above its 2010 level for the first time. The £6.7 billion committed to capital funding and £2.1 billion for school maintenance are sorely needed, and £15 million to begin delivery of 3,000 schools-based nurseries is a welcome start in early years. That these commitments have happened in such a tough fiscal climate is an important signal that education is regaining political prominence.
In addition, we are happy to see the government invest £100 million in innovation at local and regional levels. So many of the challenges we face will be solved within and by communities, and this is an encouraging sign of more effective join-up across services.
However, to properly shift outcomes for the most vulnerable children and young people, investments made here must be coupled with changes to address the root causes of the challenges we face. We urge the Government to restore real-term Pupil Premium funding and extend the Pupil Premium to Early Years and Post-16 settings, where it is arguably even more needed.
Bellow are short summaries of some short and long term changes we would like to see funded through this and subsequent budgets.
Teacher recruitment and retention: on top of the crucial teacher pay rises we must address the other drivers of teacher attrition and under-recruitment, especially in low-income communities. We need to:
Update our accountability system to recognise the complex work that schools do to address the educational impacts of poverty.
Fund programmes to recruit teachers from the local community who better reflect the pupil population, enhance community engagement and are likely to stay in the area.
Improve recruitment and progression processes to better retain individuals from ethnic minority backgrounds from application stage through to senior leadership.
Incentivise schools to adopt flexible working approaches to make teaching a sustainable career choice.
SEND: we need to rethink the way we cater to the needs of a wide range of pupils in mainstream education. The current SEND system is leading to the bankruptcy of local authorities, and the government knows this cannot continue: structural reform is needed. To begin this journey we need to:
Improve training for teachers and increase the number of staff supporting pupils with special educational needs.
We must define what an inclusive school culture looks like and spread this practice around the system.
Inclusivity must be considered in the updated school accountability framework.
Work with communities on the join-up of public services around children with SEND.
Early education and childcare: £15 million to kick off the delivery of 3,000 nurseries in primary schools will begin to improve access and affordability for many families. We also need to see:
Children whose parents are in training or out of work receiving the government’s funded childcare hours.
Streamlined entitlements and applications to make the system less complicated for families to navigate.
Joined up working of public services in the early years outside of formal settings to promote the development of children who do not attend formal settings. We anticipate the findings of the Child Poverty Task Force on how the services around families can be restored and better integrated.
Skills and post-16: we were pleased to see an additional £300 million targeted at further education and the announcement of funding for sector-specific skills initiatives but await the full details. We also want to see:
Stronger links between the education system and Skills England, including a shared skills framework.
Increased targeted support – financial and otherwise – to support students from disadvantaged backgrounds complete university.
While we must deliver the best possible education for those in the system now, we must also not lose the opportunity to ensure the plans we set up for the future will result in a fairer education system for every child in the generations to come. We hope the policy developed between now and the Spring Budget, and the investments made in that budget, will start with this shared outcome, and invest toward it.