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Cuts hitting hard

The NASUWT produced a special edition of Teaching Today on the Comprehensive Spending Review. Further information has emerged on some key aspects.


The truth about the pupil premium

The neediest pupils will lose out as a result of the Coalition Government’s decision to collapse a number of vital educational grants into one funding pot, the NASUWT has warned the Secretary of State.

Grants to fund a range of vital services are being abolished and channelled into a national school budget. Schools will then have to decide whether to use their funding to continue with these programmes.

The affected grants are:

one-to-one tuition;
Every Child programmes (such as Every Child a Reader)
extended schools;
the school lunch grant;
the school standards grant;
the school development grant;
the specialist school grant;
Ethnic Minority Achievement Grant;
national strategies budgets.

Collapsing all these grants into one pot will mean schools will now receive less money, as not all schools previously qualified for these grants, yet all schools will now be part of the distribution of the total schools budget.

This belies Mr Gove’s assertion that schools will receive more money as a result of the introduction of the pupil premium. This ‘extra’ money is in fact being funnelled from other areas of the school budget, such as grants, to give the false impression that schools funding is rising at a time when it is actually being cut.

In addition, the decision to lump these vital grants, which are given to schools to support children with specific and additional needs, into one fund will mean there is no guarantee that these dedicated funds will reach the pupils who need them most.

These grants often support specific jobs at school and local authority level, which are now in jeopardy, adding to the potential toll of redundancies in the education sector.

Chris Keates, General Secretary of the NASUWT, said: “The consequence of the Chancellor’s decision to collapse ring fenced grants into the Direct Schools Budget means that children, particularly some of the most vulnerable, are now at the mercy of individual school decision-making.

“This decision signals a return to the secret garden of funding schools where headteachers exert complete control over the use of public money and where parents and the taxpayer have no clear idea of how money is being spent.

“Cutting grants to local authorities, on which schools depend, means that reduced school budgets will have to be stretched even further.”


Sports partnerships and support services hit

The impact of the Government’s programme of spending cuts is being felt, with a raft of education programmes and services being withdrawn or severely curtailed.

The £162 million school sports budget is being withdrawn, leaving schools to fund physical activity out of their existing budgets. Central services are also being hit, with major cuts announced to special educational needs provision, specialist schools coordinators and advisory services.

These cuts will mean that yet more sources of vital expertise and support are being lost to schools and that more jobs are under threat. A total of 450 School sports Partnerships could fold as a result of the scrapping of the dedicated sports budget, a decision which will damage children’s health and also hinder the development of sporting talent. Michael Gove has suggested schools could ‘buy’ support from local authorities, but this suggestion is sheer economic illiteracy at a time when school budgets are under severe strain.

The NASUWT opposes job loss and is working with other public service unions to fight the cuts.


Pension threat challenged

Clarification is urgently being sought from the Chancellor over plans to increase employee contributions to public sector pension schemes across the UK by an average of 3% from April 2012. As part of the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) in October, the Coalition Government made a statement saying that it would be seeking to agree with stakeholders, including trade unions, changes to the level of employee contributions to public sector pension schemes, with the aim of delivering £1.8 billion of savings per year by 2014-15. The statement went on to say that the precise level of additional contributions will be determined once Lord Hutton’s final recommendations from his review into public sector pensions are received next year.

However, this statement subsequently appeared to be contradicted in correspondence to the Teachers’ Superannuation Working Party, the body that negotiates teachers’ pensions, from the Department for Education (DfE). This stated that the Government intended to bring in an average rise of 3% in employee contributions for all public sector schemes from April 2012. The NASUWT has written to the Chancellor seeking urgent clarification on the discrepancy and stating that making further changes so soon after the 2006 review of the teachers’ scheme introduced increased retirement age and employee contributions is grossly unfair. The Union has also queried what, if any, proportion of the projected £1.8 billion of savings will be allocated to the education budget.

“Once again we are seeing the public sector being made to pay for the financial recklessness and greed of those who caused the current financial crisis,” Chris Keates, General Secretary of the NASUWT, said, adding: “The Teachers’ Pension Scheme was recently reviewed. Contributions have gone up, the retirement age has increased and arrangements have been made to secure the long term sustainability, affordability and viability of the schemes.

“Asking teachers to pay more into their pensions, particularly at a time of rampant inflation and a public sector pay freeze is completely unfair, iniquitous and unjust.”

Complete the NASUWT online survey on pensions www.nasuwt.org.uk/MemberOpinionSurvey

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