16th October 2018
Tuesday, 16 October 2018
The Northern Ireland Audit Office (NIAO) report entitled “The Financial Health of Schools,” published on 16 th October 2018 makes for sombre reading. It paints a picture of our education system in an ever-increasing financial morass made worse by administrative and political failure. What it doesn’t do is address the key point of the decline in the overall level of funding for our education system. The system has seen the global amount available to education from the Bloc Grant deteriorate year on year since 2010/11.
INTO, Northern Secretary, Gerry Murphy commenting on the report pointed out;
“The level of funding provided to the Department of Education [DE] in each of the financial years since 2010/11 has declined in real terms by 10%, whilst the number of pupils in our schools continues to increase year on year. In cash terms this represents a reduction of £200 million, which by the 2019/20 financial year will grow to a £350 million shortfall in education funding. This shortfall calculated on the already inadequate funding situation the system was in at the conclusion of the 2015/16 year, means the actual shortfall could be significantly larger. This reduction in funding is considered as “a cut” by the education community.
The depth of the crisis was characterised very succinctly by the Permanent Secretary to the Department of Education, Mr Derek Baker, in his address to a gathering of Principals and MLAs at Stormont in September 2017. Referring to the 2017/18 financial year, Mr Baker said, “That even if I were to close the Department of Education, the whole Youth Service and Sure Start I’d still be shy of £105 million.”
The real term cuts to school budgets in the 2017/18 year saw all primary and nursery schools receive a reduction of approximately £56 per pupil compared to the 2016/17 year and the post primary schools suffered a funding reduction in the same period of £25 per pupil.”
In conclusion Mr Murphy said;
“The Audit office report is useful in describing the problem, and some off the operational recommendations it makes are worthy of consideration, however, INTO cautions against looking to the English education system for solutions. This re-arrangement of the deck chairs leading to even greater degrees of accountability and sanction will only have further negative consequences for our children, their teachers, the parents and those citizens who volunteer for the increasingly thankless job of school governance.
What is clear is that Principals and volunteer school Governors are not equipped to deal with the systemic failures coupled with the policy choices of the Conservative Government. Mrs May indicated at her recent party conference that austerity was over. If that is the case, can we now please have the proper funding that our education system demands, we can’t any longer ignore the financial elephant in the room!”
ENDS