Budget Resolutions

Holly Lynch Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)]

In this Budget debate, I want to focus particularly on schools, children and young people, and the pressures facing headteachers and local authorities in struggling to balance their budgets. We get one chance at getting a child’s primary education right: they will not get those years back and we will not get that opportunity back. It is the one and only chance to set the foundations for their future, and every child is a building block on which our hopes and aspirations for the country rest.

In January this year, the local campaign group Calderdale Against School Cuts conducted an anonymous survey of all Calderdale primary headteachers about their budgets and how they were managing school funding. Some 65% of the schools contacted completed and returned the survey representing a broad cross-section of schools, from right across Calderdale’s communities.

The survey revealed that in this financial year half of all headteachers had made reductions to teaching staff, while 84% had not replaced staff who had left. Some 73% had reduced support staff and 47% of primary heads were planning to make staff redundant to balance the books. Some 80% of schools had been forced to cut back on maintenance and building repairs. Perhaps most worryingly, 100% of the heads who responded anticipated that their school would be struggling to cope in the near future, with concerns about balancing the school budget for the next three years.

An ever-increasing number of schools now face the prospect of deficit budgets, forcing them to make redundancies within both their support and teaching staff. The results show that because of financial constraints, the non-replacement of staff is no longer a choice but a necessity, which places even greater demand on the already stretched remaining staff. Headteachers were keen to stress that it has become increasingly difficult to recruit support staff to work in schools, given that they can earn more working in local supermarkets, for example.

In addition to the financial pressures facing all schools, there has been what we can only describe as an explosion in the numbers of children with emotional, behavioural or mental health difficulties, and schools are especially struggling with resources, funding and specialist support for that cohort of children. Calderdale Council has a predicted £5.9 million overspend on high-needs children. It also reports a 150% increase in the number of children with education, health and care plans since covid. When a school has a child with additional needs recognised by an EHCP, it has to find from its existing budget the first £6,000 to provide support for that child. In reality, the only way that is achievable is by diverting money away from the day-to-day provision of teaching and learning.

The Halifax Courier ran the survey results on its front page with a headline about how cuts were pushing schools to the edge. The article included this quote:

“Our survey confirms that cuts to funding, rising poverty and SEND are pushing schools to breaking point.”

Nationally, according to the Department for Education’s own figures, one in eight local authority maintained schools was in deficit in 2022-23—the highest number of schools in deficit on record. The Observer also ran the survey results, with a quote from a Yorkshire primary head teacher:

“We are approaching a time when it isn’t safe to open. There will be children who are being violent and there won’t be enough staff to manage.”

She said that she had not been able to justify replacing teachers and support staff who had resigned over the past year and that in September she will be forced to merge a year of children containing many who are vulnerable and have additional needs with the year above, because they are losing yet another teacher. She said:

“You have to do it to make your budget work, but what about the impact on the children?”

Mungo Sheppard, the truly outstanding headteacher at Ash Green Primary School, which serves the Mixenden area of Halifax in my constituency, told The Observer:

“Heads are forced to balance the books rather than saying ‘How many staff do we actually need for our children?’ It’s terrifying.”

He said that some local schools are having to cut pastoral roles as well as teaching jobs, and that many no longer have enough classroom support staff

“to cater for the ever-growing needs of children”.

He added that despite being over-subscribed, his school will have a “large” deficit by April next year and

“other local schools are already in perilous situations, running out of money”.

Ash Green serves one of the most deprived parts of my home town. Led by Mr Sheppard, the staff delivered food and vouchers during covid, just to make sure that children and their families had at least some food on the table. Just when staff were starting to get some respite from the soul-destroying challenges of covid, the school was hit by deliberate arson, which tore through several classrooms. The school runs a breakfast club because so many children were going without, and it has also set up a lending scheme for families and parents who have nowhere else to turn. The staff at Ash Green represent school staff up and down the country, who have to overcome so many challenges before they can start the school day. It is just not right that the staff and headteacher spend so much time worrying about how he will balance the books in order to cover the basics of paying the staff’s wages and keeping buildings and children safe.

Schools are increasingly picking up the pieces of our broken society. The Government have finally woken up to doing something about non-dom tax status, adopting our long-standing policy, and we are still 100% committed to funding breakfast clubs, additional teachers and mental health specialists in schools—pledges that we know are necessary and that we are incredibly proud of. There was nothing in yesterday’s Budget for councils, which have limited means of providing any additional support to schools.

The Labour leadership of Calderdale Council and some truly dedicated officers are working their socks off to balance its budget. They will find a way, but they are struggling financially and morally to do so. In the last financial quarter, Calderdale Council’s budget for children and young people had a £7.8 million overspend, which has increased by £1.7 million this financial year. The biggest driver of that overspend is the rising number of required placements for children in care, with the costs rising significantly. The lack of placement availability nationally and locally is a key factor, as it is everywhere.

The Chancellor had something to say on this issue yesterday, stating:

“Too many children in care end up being looked after by unregistered providers that are much more expensive”.—[Official Report, 6 March 2024; Vol. 746, c. 848.]

He announced some new investment, with the Government pledging to develop

“proposals on what more can be done to combat profiteering, bring down costs and create a more sustainable market for residential placements,”

which they will publish later this year. I really struggle with the use of the word “market” to describe placements for children in care—it reveals everything that is wrong with children’s social care—but the announcement comes two years after the Competition and Markets Authority concluded that the profits of the largest private children’s home and fostering providers are higher than would be expected in a well-functioning market, with average margins of 22.6% in residential care between 2016 and 2020. That begs the question of why it has taken so long to do anything about this issue. Why have the Government allowed the system to become so broken, to the detriment of both local councils and some of the most vulnerable children in our society?

With that in mind, why on earth are the Government not doing more to support kinship carers? In 2021, it was estimated that there are 130,000 children in kinship care, but this figure accounts for just 15% of children in the care system. I urge Ministers to look again at the Family Rights Group’s call to extend the financial allowances pathfinder to more local authorities, and to remove the perverse criterion that children must have previously been looked after to be eligible. The pilot scheme for a new kinship financial allowance is under way in only a small number of local authorities, with very narrow eligibility criteria. We know that it could be a way forward for councils, carers and, most importantly, vulnerable children, so will the Government please accelerate that work, make this issue a priority and roll out support for carers beyond the pilot scheme?

The OBR has confirmed that this will be the worst Parliament on record for living standards, and the only Parliament on record in which living standards have fallen. The BBC reports that Nottingham City Council, Birmingham City Council and Woking Borough Council all went bust in 2023, following Thurrock Council and Croydon Council—for the third time—in 2022. It is even more harrowing that half of all councils are warning that, without reform, they will be effectively bankrupt within five years. Do the Government think that this is some kind of phenomenon, or could it be a direct result of their decision making and their actions?

The Budget will come as no relief to schools or councils that are desperately trying to undertake their statutory duties to educate children and keep them safe. We need to be in a position to deliver Labour’s commitments. We need a general election.