“I would not be willing to lead and oversee what I would regard as the decimation of an educational institution. Therefore, I would have no alternative but to resign.”

Richard Slade, headteacher of Plumcroft Primary School in Greenwich, London, is a dedicated school leader. But he says that if the government doesn’t change course with its funding cuts, he might be forced to consider his position.

He is not alone. The financial situation facing schools is so bleak that many heads are now questioning their futures in a way that would have been unthinkable only a couple of years ago.

It’s just one thread in a broader story which is unfolding in schools across the country. Schools have to find billions of savings. Even if new money is announced, heads have already had to reshape their workforces to fit within a tight financial envelope.

It’s a process which is exacting an emotional toll on teachers, but also on the school leaders charged with making the difficult decisions about where - and upon whom - the axe will fall.

And it means that schools aren’t just having to worry about stretching meagre budgets - the current round of cuts have a significant human impact, too.

Andy Mellor, head teacher at St Nicholas Church of England Primary School in Blackpool, recently had to lose four teaching assistants who were on temporary contracts.

Having to let the assistants go caused dismay among his colleagues, who warned about the impact on learning.

“I understand that’s the situation, but we can’t pay people with buttons,” is his stark response.

Mellor says his team are a “robust bunch” - they took their Ofsted rating from “requires improvement” to “outstanding” in three years - but job losses inevitably impact morale.

“[Using] a footballing analogy, we’re in a position where we built a team that’s won the league, as far as we’re concerned. We’re now having to dismantle it because the government is not putting funding in.

“It’s bound to have an impact when valued colleagues are lost.”

According to the National Audit Office (NAO), schools will have to find £3 billion of savings by 2019-20 - equivalent to an 8 per cent real-terms cut - because increasing cost pressures are outstripping funding growth.

With the NAO estimating that about three-quarters of schools’ spending is on staff, it’s clear where the lion’s share of those savings will have to come from.

A ‘big bite’ into staff numbers

While heads will do everything they can to insulate their colleagues from the cuts, Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, says there will inevitably be a “big bite” into staff numbers.

Barton, who stepped down as a secondary head last month, says the prospect of job losses has “injected a sense of fear into staffrooms across the country”.

It’s something that has been noticed by the Education Support Partnership (ESP), a charity that runs a helpline for teachers.

Julian Stanley, the ESP’s chief executive, says his operators have picked up “instability, fear, mistrust, a sense of isolation [and] loneliness” from callers.

When redundancies are made, fear gets “trickled down” because everyone is wondering who’s next,” he says.

This anxiety is only exacerbated by leaner staffing models, which result in fewer teachers doing more work.

Slade has been forced to make one redundancy to date and has stopped using external supply teachers to cover staff absences. He believes “trimming capacity to such a fine level” has raised stress levels.

“It is increasing that pressure day to day,” he says. “If we’re short of staff due to illness, it means we’re having to stretch capacity to continue to meet need, and that’s having an impact on the staff.”

The risk is that schools can get caught in a vicious cycle where job losses increase workloads, resulting in teacher burnout and people exiting the profession - which only piles additional pressure on those who remain.

But it’s not just classroom teachers feeling the strain. Having to make redundancies puts “immense pressure” on headteachers, says Stanley, particularly when they’re taking place in a “close-knit” school community

Mellor admits it was a wrench to let valued colleagues go simply because he no longer had enough money to pay them.

“To lose those people who you’ve worked hard with to move the school forward to get to where we’ve got to, is heartbreaking,” he says.

“To see them walk away and then go and work for somebody else, or lose them to the profession altogether, and all because money is being siphoned off to fund free schools and grammar schools...” He trails off.

It gets too much for some heads. In February, Mary Sandell, the head teacher of The Forest School in Berkshire, announced in a letter to parents and staff that she was resigning because she “did not enter the teaching profession to make cuts”, nor to “reduce the number of teachers”.

There’s little doubt that other heads will follow suit. Barton says ASCL’s advice hotline receives calls from school leaders “genuinely in a sense of despair” about the funding situation.

For Slade, the red line is if he’s forced to make redundancies to a “point where there just won’t be enough adults in the school to really run a safe operation”. He says he would “refuse on the grounds of safety” to implement such cuts. If that wasn’t accepted, then he’d resign.

But perhaps the most demoralising thing for heads is the powerlessness they feel about their situation.

With a track record of turning around failing schools, Slade says he’s not “squeamish” about making tough decisions. “What I think my frustration at the moment is professionally I’m being put into ‘either/or’ situations that I don’t think I should be,” he adds.

It’s the same message from Barton: “We’re used to taking tough decisions but they’re things which we had been in control of.”

“You just feel powerless to be able to do the thing that you want to do,” says Mellor.

“When you know the sort of difference you can make to children, but are prevented from doing it? It’s demoralising.”

@whazell