SCHOOL FUNDING
Letter sent to Parents/Carers 03/03/2017
Dear Parents/Carers,
School Funding
You may have seen a number of stories in the press around school funding. There have been worrying headlines and we felt it important that we let you know, as far as we are able at this stage, how this will affect our school.
School budgets across the country have been under pressure for some time. The senior leadership team at The Highway Primary School has been grappling with the funding challenges, leading to a number of tough decisions being made.
Our school is not alone. The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) has shown that more than half of school leaders felt that their budget would be untenable by 2018/19. The National Audit Office estimate a £3 billion real terms cut across all phases and in all schools. This doesn’t just affect us.
The recent headlines have been caused by a proposed new funding formula for schools, designed to create a fairer allocation. However with increasing costs placed onto all schools the new formula will not bring the benefits that we had hoped to see. The School Cuts website, analysing DfE data, projects that our school, as well as schools in our local authority will lose £491 per pupil which equates to £106,500 by 2019. If you are concerned please visit the website www.schoolcuts.org.uk for information about how you can write to our local MP and express your views.
We will work hard to ensure that cuts have the least impact on teaching possible. The excellent work of the FOTH means we can provide equipment that we would simply not be able to afford otherwise. However, rising costs and a shrinking budget mean that unless things change, we will have to carry on taking difficult decisions. We are doing our utmost to ensure this does not impact on core functions of the school.
Please be assured that we will take the utmost care with budgets, to ensure all the money we have is spent effectively on your children. We are also letting the local authority and government know just how serious the funding crisis has become.
Yours sincerely,
Mrs S Kenneth Mrs S Gardiner
Head Teacher Chair of Governors
