By Vivienne Russell | 23 May 2013
The ring-fence protecting school budgets should be removed at next month’s Spending Review and funding slashed by 18%, a think-tank has said.
In a study mapping funding increases to outcomes, Reform found ‘no correlation at all’ between higher funding levels and better teaching and exam results.
Spending on primary and secondary education in the UK increased by 86% in real terms between 2001/02 and 20011/12, the think-tank said. In per-pupil terms, spending in England across primary and secondary schools increased by almost 90% in real terms between 1999/00 and 2009/10.
But Reform’s analysis found no relation between higher levels of per-pupil spending and the quality of teaching as measured by Ofsted. On average, the same level of funding produced ‘inadequate’, ‘satisfactory’, ‘good’ and ‘outstanding’ teaching.
Reform also cited recent Department for Education research, which identified only a weak relationship between funding levels and outcomes at Key Stage Four.
The think-tank concluded that the ring-fence around school funding was damaging education. ‘It is preventing schools from thinking hard about how best to use their budgets,’ Reform said.
It added that the ring-fence meant other public services, such as early intervention programmes, which can help schools, were being cut.
‘The government should abolish the ring-fence around the schools budget in the forthcoming spending round,’ said Reform.
‘The necessary cuts in the schools budget will depend on Treasury decisions in other spending areas… Given the extremely high increases in school spending in recent years, an 18% reduction would be a reasonable ambition for school spending in the 2015 Parliament.’
But teaching unions were unimpressed with Reform’s finding. Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, called the report ‘enormously selective’.
She said: ‘Schools needed a large rise in funding between 2000 and 2010 because they faced huge problems recruiting good graduates into teaching and many schools were falling to pieces following over a decade of under-spending when the last Conservative government was in power.’
Brian Lightman, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: ‘This study makes a number of false assertions about the level of real-term increases in school budgets and draws conclusions that are not substantiated by evidence. It is a stark reminder of the dangers of relying on data alone, rather than talking to professionals and looking at what is happening on the ground.
‘It is true that funding has increased over the past ten years but the vast majority of schools will have nowhere near a real-term increase at the level indicated in the report. In the past three years, the majority of schools have seen a reduction in real terms in their budgets.’
He added that cuts of 16% would make some schools ‘impossible to run’.
