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FEATURE


Northern Ireland braces itself for cuts

Teachers in Northern Ireland are facing the stark impact of the spending cuts imposed by the Westminster Government as Ministers get ready to reveal what is likely to be an austere budget for 2011/12.

The Government will be setting out details of its spending plans for the coming year in February and if Wales and Scotland’s recently announced budgets are any indication, teachers will be faced with a pay freeze and threats to the national framework of pay and conditions, in addition to severe cuts to school budgets and services.

During the Comprehensive Spending Review, the Chancellor George Osborne claimed that all the devolved nations have received rises in their budgets, but the Scottish and Welsh budgets published on 17 November reveal the true reality of the real terms cuts facing the devolved nations, if inflation is factored in at its true level. The Coalition Government has also announced its intention to reform the operation of the Barnett formula by which funding is allocated to the devolved nations. This could lead to an even tighter squeeze on funding.

The NASUWT will be fighting any cutbacks to teachers’ pay and working conditions and believes it is folly, at a time when skills and education represent the best opportunity to secure economic recovery, to undermine the profession in this way.

Although education strategies may be different across the UK, there is no doubt that the adverse impact on children and young people, teachers and schools will be the same. Teachers in the devolved nations face the pay freeze, potential rises in pension contributions and job loss. Children and young people will lose vital education programmes and services. Schools will have to make difficult decisions wrestling with reduced budget and capital expenditure. Local authorities, governors and school leaders are being left to make impossibly difficult decisions on spending priorities.

This makes it especially critical that all NASUWT members join the NASUWT’s Championing Education campaign to press for a fully resourced education system, which recognises and rewards teachers and principals as highly skilled


The budget – what’s at stake?

Ministers in Northern Ireland have already warned that over £4 billion will be taken out of the economy over the next four years, putting 30,000 jobs in the public and private sector at risk.

For Northern Ireland the situation is particularly bleak as the education budget has already been raided to divert funds to other activities, leaving teachers and principals looking enviously at the pay and conditions enjoyed by colleagues in England and Wales to which they are denied access. Meanwhile, the political impasse over the future of the Education and Skills Authority (ESA) continues, leaving schools in limbo at a time when leadership and support is needed more than ever.

The Department of Education for Northern Ireland (DENI) currently has a budget of £1.9 billion and has stated that its budget could be cut by as much as £360 million over the next four years as part of major cutbacks across the public sector.

If implemented this would equate to a reduction of up to £80m-£90m for each of the next four years. Overall, the current £2 billion budget will shrink to close to £1.6 billion.

This would have a devastating impact on Northern Ireland’s education service and is likely to mean schools will close, teachers and support staff will be made redundant and class sizes will increase, leading to increased workload for teachers and lower educational standards.

Health and safety and pupil attainment will also suffer with a further squeeze on the building of new schools and the backlog of essential repairs and maintenance of existing, and in many cases poor, school buildings remaining unaddressed.

With the budget yet to be announced the NASUWT believes there is still much to play for and has been undertaking a programme of campaigning and lobbying to raise public awareness of the threat to education and to seek to persuade Ministers of the importance of protecting education.

The NASUWT has joined together with the wider trade union movement across Northern Ireland to lead a campaign against the cuts. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) has launched a People, Jobs and Services campaign to call for a better, fairer way to tackle the budget deficit which does not devastate the services on which millions of ordinary people depend.

The Union has also been distributing campaign material to schools and meeting with politicians and education officials within DENI to argue its case against the cuts.

The threat to jobs and services makes it especially critical that all NASUWT members, along with their colleagues, families and friends support the NASUWT’s campaign to press for a fully resourced education system, which recognises and rewards teachers and principals as highly skilled professionals.

Further information on the impact of the spending cuts, the NASUWT’s 10-point alternative plan for reducing the financial deficit and the latest updates from across the UK on the threats to education are available on the NASUWT’s Championing education webpage at www.nasuwt.org.uk/championingeducation