Schools set to lose out on £370 million due to DfE error

[Postapocalypticcowgirl]

https://schoolsweek.co.uk/dfe-made-370m-error-in-school-funding-calculations/

"The government’s prediction for the minimum per-pupil funding for secondary schools has been revised down by £55. At primary level it’s down £45.
Based on these figures, the average secondary school would be £57,970 worse-off than predicted in July, and the average primary would be £12,420 worse-off."

In school terms, this is a large amount of money, at this stage in the year, the budget will already be allocated, and in many case it will be spent or cannot be reallocated. This will push some schools that were doing okay financially into deficit, and cause further financial struggles in many schools.

For many schools, the only way to save that money will be to look at staffing- if someone leaves in the middle of the year, they may not be replaced to save money.

I would say there are very few schools in the country (especially facing another winter of high fuel bills and increased costs) who can just absorb that loss in funding.

Surely as a bare minimum, the DfE should honour all the money they promised schools this summer? It just shows how incompetent the current government are, that something like this could even happen!

WTAF! Schools are on their bare arses with funding as it is!

It will be interesting to see how much this story is picked up by the media. It's shocking, given how inadequate the 2.8% was to begin with.

I'm guessing that is part of the reason they've announced it at 5pm on a Friday.

Obviously no thought about the stress levels of heads/leadership. Like we have such a surplus of good headteachers in this country we can afford to burn them out in this way...

It's on Radio 4 this morning.

Second story on BBC news website.

No surprises there. Can the government do anything properly ?

Oh no, this is so worrying, yet again children are let down at a time when they need more help than ever and people working in schools have to worry about losing their jobs.

I'm so fucking angry about this. It is getting a lot of coverage but not nearly the prominence it should.

Seems unbelievably dodgy and they settled the teacher dispute to end strikes and now this 'oh we just made a miscalculation so you're not getting the money after all'. Fuck right off Tory assholes.

In this case it's the Civil Service that's cocked up. The head of the relevant department has had to write to the politicians to tell them it's happened. It's not a policy decision

Maths evidently not their strong suit

But the government could make a policy decision to honour the original figure, presumably? And where’s the ministerial oversight?

They could decide to go with the erroneous figure, but that would mean cutting elsewhere. The same would be true for a government of any colour.

The government has ordered an enquiry into how it happened and how to stop it happening again

I would suggest that ensuring the Civil Service appointing mathematically literate staff where figures are involved, rather than ones demonstrating the current rightthink, would be wise.

@Chersfrozenface where does the buck stop?
Don’t defend the useless government and hide behind civil service errors. There should be sufficient oversight at all levels. And no, it wouldn’t mean cutting somewhere else. The budget is flexible when it’s something they want to do.

I'm quite capable of criticising any government when it's at fault.

But ministers don't check civil servants' sums, not in London or Edinburgh or Cardiff.

When it emerged that a deal between the Welsh Labour government and a film studio company had been royally cocked up, the chairman of the Assembly (as it was then) Public Accounts Committee said, "There needs to be a review of the capacity within the Welsh Government, within the civil service, of the capability of the sort of people there."

I do think all governments in the UK should review that.

They apparently don't know how many children are in school. Which is actually ridiculous for any of them to admit, since there's a school census every long term that counts every child in school.

It's how school funding is allocated in the first place. You couldn't make it up if you tried!

@Chersfrozenface but in this case, as @SunsetGirl says, it’s a fundamental error. That is the sort of thing Ministers should have oversight/knowledge of, otherwise what’s the point of them?

Ministers undoubtedly believe that civil servants can do their job and get basic figures right.

In this case it's hardly a novel task.

Thing is @Chersfrozenface the government have proven themselves incompetent (as well as deliberately corrupt) so often that I’m not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt on this.

I am.

Not on other issues, though.

The Tories and their media cheerleaders have been openly attacking the Civil Service for ages now. Not surprised major cock-ups are happening, it must be very hard to recruit the required staff and keep morale out of the basement.

This is disgraceful. As is the way it's been publicised. 5pm on Friday, after end of conference.

What the hall are schools supposed to do? Don't they have enough worries and concerns and inadequate funding to contend with?

This country's education system is letting the current school aged generation down. And there doesn't seem to be enough anger about it.

If there was a £370m error/shortfall in any other sector, there'd be an immediate plan to address it. Not just shoulder shrugging and a pointless (any costly) enquiry.

The money was already allocated in government budgets- they could honour it. It all seems very dodgy, given this money was promised following the teacher's strikes in the spring/summer.

The fact is that this funding shortfall will very likely push a number of schools into deficit, with all the problems that come with that. In all honest, I feel if cuts have to be made elsewhere, then so be it. Education is on its knees in the country- there could at least be some acknowledgement that this is going to be a serious problem, and a plan to help schools who end up in financial difficulty due to this.

I also believe the decision to announce at 5pm on a Friday was political- they were hoping it would get buried. And there's no consideration for the wellbeing of school leaders there.

It's another omnishambles

Standards in both setting policy and in executing it are diabolical

My best guess as a teacher is that what will happen is that where schools can't absorb the shortfall (i.e. most schools), if a member of staff leaves before the end of the year, the school may not be able to replace them until the new academic year. Secondary schools especially are adept at papering over the cracks of staff shortages anyway.

If a seconday school had 2-3 teachers leave at Christmas and decided to manage without them for the rest of the year, then they'd likely be able to save that sort of money.

For a primary school, it would probably be one teacher for part of a year, or maybe a TA for a whole year.

I can't see anywhere else cuts of that magnitude can be made after the start of the school year. Utility bills have to be paid, and we can't just have the lights off and use less electricity. Resource budgets could be cut, but these will likely have already been partially spent in September, stocking up for the new school year, and honestly to save over £50,000, you'd be looking at no reagents for practical science, no resources for DT, no resources for art- and then some.

Schools are under funded and under valued. It's really sad that governments don't value education for all children more.

Yeah, I mean if all schools were running a surplus budget, this would still be difficult, but probably manageable.

With so many schools already in deficit, or just breaking even, this will make things so much more difficult.

The school where I work made a decision to have a temporary deficit budget this year (mainly due to factors beyond our control such as increasing costs, issues with school transport etc)- I'm not sure what the impact of a further deficit of £50,000 could be- but it won't be good.

We have already increased class sizes across the board, and have very few TAs.