School leaders are warning of the “catastrophic” measures they will be forced to take this winter - including restricting heating and cutting staff - as they face five-fold energy price hikes and unfunded pay rises.
Heads have told Tes they are “crying out” for intervention from the government, and say their budgets were “never designed” to cope with price increases on this scale.
One head at a local authority-maintained primary school told Tes they had already had to cut the equivalent of four full-time support staff.
Meanwhile, one large multi-academy trust (MAT) will see its energy bill rise to £14.3 million in 2022-23, a huge increase of £9.2 million on last year.
The president of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), Pepe Di’Iasio, said he “cannot believe” that the government has not intervened in the situation.
‘Can we turn the heating on later?’
Nearly half of respondents to a snap Tes survey of 250 school staff run over the past week said they believed rising energy bills will have a “catastrophic” impact on their budget this year.
Of the 121 senior leaders, heads and academy CEOs who responded, 77 per cent said they would have to consider restricting heating.
Vic Goddard, CEO of Passmores Cooperative Learning Community, a trust of schools in Essex, said: “We’re thinking and looking at things like: can we turn the heating on 15 minutes later? What does that feel like? What does it feel like if we turn it off 15 minutes earlier?
“We always try and achieve value for money, but these are things we wouldn’t have bothered about before as you save so, so little. Now, they save more and we have to look at them.”
As well as rationing heating, schools are looking at a wide range of other cost-cutting measures due to energy costs.
More than half (61 per cent) of school leaders responding to Tes’ survey said their school would have to consider cutting classroom support staff; 29 per cent said they would consider cutting teaching staff; and over half (53 per cent) said their school would consider pausing recruitment.
One primary head warned that cost pressures would “likely stop all of the additional activities that enhance the curriculum”, including after-school clubs and school trips.
Another head warned that the cost pressures on families from the current cost-of-living crisis also meant cuts were coming at a time when they expected schools to become “integral hubs for supporting many families at breaking point”.
A secondary head said they felt “really scared” about how they would manage, adding: “I’ve been a head for 12 years, and there have always been solutions. I can’t see any now.”
Increased difficulties in supporting children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) also appeared throughout the survey responses.
Rising energy costs ‘not sustainable’
Energy bills have sky-rocketed in the past few months, with the NAHT school leaders’ union saying some members have reported 500 per cent increases.
Adding to this financial pressure, the Department for Education has awarded experienced teachers a 5 per cent pay rise from September, which schools are expected to fund within their usual budgets.
Speaking to Tes, Nick Hudson, chief executive of Ormiston Academies Trust, a large MAT that sponsors 43 academies, said the trust was projecting an energy bill of £14.3 million for the next 12 months - £9.2 million more than in 2021-22.
Hudson described the rising costs as “not sustainable for anyone”. He said that the schools in the trust would be as energy-conscious as possible, switching off lights, adjusting boiler settings and reducing usage, but that this alone could not “bridge the gap”.
“Everything extra we are spending on energy we can’t spend on education, such as staff, curriculum, teaching resources, salaries and so on. When you add that to the additional spend we are having to find on the new staff pay awards, and other higher costs, it does make it very challenging”.
Rachael Warwick, chief executive of Ridgeway Education Trust in Oxfordshire, said the trust was renewing its energy contract in September, and would see an added cost of around £950,000 over the year, but brokers had suggested this was the best deal available to them.
This, coupled with around £300,000 extra on their budget from the teacher and support staff pay award, equates to around 30 teachers, and Ms Warwick said she had written to the Education and Skills Funding Agency to ask for extra support, as the additional costs were unaffordable.
“Tightening our belts will not even touch the surface. We would not even be able to afford redundancy costs,” she said.
She added that the school would try to cut energy costs by looking at an “action plan”, including turning on heating later, but added: “We don’t know how hard this will be as we’ve not done it before. It’s one thing asking children to put on an extra sweater, but you cannot have them coming to school cold”.
“These are exponential increases on budgets that were never designed to cope with this type of price rise. The government has to intervene, I don’t see it as a choice. You cannot let public services fail.”
‘Crying out’ for support
Stuart Gardner, CEO of The Thinking Schools Academy Trust, said the MAT had just renewed electricity contracts at a cost four times higher than their current rate.
He said that the trust would use reserves this year, but would take an “even bigger hit” next year, and would have to make “difficult decisions”.
“Using our reserves isn’t a sustainable response and not a good business model,” he said, adding: “The new Academies Financial Handbook speaks about the importance of long-term financial planning and we have done that - but this is very difficult to manage.”
He pointed to the additional funding made available to schools during the height of Covid, and said trusts should be able to submit business cases for help due to the energy crisis.
“We understand that the increases are not the government’s fault but something needs to be done,” he said, warning that otherwise “a culture will be created” whereby trusts build up large reserves to use at times like this.
He added: “But hanging on to funding is not right - it’s appropriate to have 4 or 5 per cent of reserves, but beyond that funding should be spent on education today, not used to stockpile reserves.”
Other school leaders spoke of cuts to their provision that had already come.
Pepe Di’Iasio, who in addition to his ASCL role is also headteacher at Wales High School in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, said that the school was “relatively lucky”, having renewed its energy contract earlier this year and experiencing a rise of “only” 120 per cent.
But even so, he said the school was making cuts by not replacing departing staff, having spread a leaving exams officer’s role between several other members of staff, and deciding not to hire a replacement for a grounds staff member that recently left.
He added: “I can’t believe the government has not intervened is my key message. We’re crying out for intervention.”
Daniel Woodrow, headteacher at St Gregory CEVC Primary School, an LA-maintained primary school in Suffolk, said the school had made a decision to not renew any expiring fixed-term support staff contracts to meet the cost of their rising energy costs. This chalked off a five-figure sum from the school’s almost six-figure deficit.
He said that overall, the school - which incorporates a nursery and a specialist unit - had lost the equivalent of 4.3 full-time support staff.
“Our pupils will receive less support, our staff will have to adjust to being in class on their own when they had been used to full-time support and it was not a popular decision - although people understood why it had to be taken,” he added.
But he said the “unfunded” salary increases - which he described as “welcome”, but “not enough” - then wiped off all of these savings, meaning the school will still run a “huge deficit”.
He said: “Unless the government intervenes then our only options will involve staffing, which means less support for children, less access to specialists and bought-in services, more disrepair to our school building and more teaching for SLT - particularly my deputy and I - which means less strategic development for the school.
“There will also, of course, be more pressure from the LA to reduce costs but also to improve outcomes for children and close gaps, and the two seem incompatible”.
Warren Carratt, CEO at Nexus Multi Academy Trust, a group of special schools, said that support staff pay rises now meant two-thirds of his forecast for the next year was now accounted for by teaching assistants.
He added: “Building and maintenance budgets will likely need to be reduced to compensate for staffing cost pressures, and in terms of recruitment, we’ll have to look at each vacancy carefully. We won’t institute a blanket freeze, but we will need to consider workforce engineering.
“We’ll need to cut all non-essential spend, which will include redefining what this is.”
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We recognise that schools - much like the wider economy - are facing increased costs due to the unprecedented recent rise inflation.
“To support schools, budgets will rise by £7 billion by 2024-25, compared with 2021-22, with the total core school budget increasing to £56.8 billion.
“In the current financial year alone, core school funding is rising by £4 billion compared with the previous financial year, a 7 per cent cash-terms per-pupil increase, which as the IFS concludes will mean that any increased costs are broadly affordable for schools in 2022-23.”
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