The course itself was useful and interesting. The principal speaker, Hywel Thomas, professor of the economics of education at the University of Birmingham, has conducted research into the impact of LMS on schools which reveals that the innovation has been highly successful in enabling schools to match their resources to pupils’ needs.

This has certainly been my experience. Because of our new budgetary flexibility we have been able to carry out a range of building improvements to enhance our accommodation, increase our range of resources and install equipment all of which would have been difficult to imagine until recently. We are also able to mount a programme of painting and maintenance which was not possible in the old bureaucratic system.

Professor Thomas’s research showed this new flexibility had brought benefits to nearly all schools, despite headteachers’ additional workload. But he also pointed to the fact that schools managed surpluses much better than they did deficits and that long-term planning was essential but became difficult, if not impossible, when funding is unreliable or is cut. There are very few schools not facing precisely that position!

Over the past two years there have been severe cuts in funding for education. Two years ago, schools’ budgets in this country were cut by 1.5 per cent and a range of services previously provided automatically by the LEA, such as IT support, insurance, teacher absence cover, were “delegated”, ie, the school had to pay for them without any increase in funds.

Last year the LEA cut more services but “protected” school budgets. Schools received the same funding as in the previous year with no allowance for inflation and no provision for the teachers’ pay rise, and again services previously provided free now had to be paid for.

As a result my school’s budget has been reduced by over Pounds 100,000. In 1991 John Masefield employed 48 staff to teach 629 pupils. The number of students has now risen to 652 but they are taught by 42 staff. Even so, further reductions will be needed next year.

LMS is a marvellous idea, but has been so abused that it is now a con. It has become the means by which education spending can be cut savagely without arousing public indignation or provoking outraged resistance. Each school must now deal with the consequences individually, and in its isolation focuses on dealing with the problem rather than protesting about its cause.

Such sweeping reductions in school budgets might not even have been possible when they were controlled by county councils because public protest would have been so strong. Now schools fall into line because otherwise the community might feel that the problem lies with that particular school’s inability to manage.

We the public simply do not make any connection between “public spending cuts” and “damaging our children’s education”. When the Chancellor says he will reduce public spending we imagine that useful savings will be made and some dusty, unnecessary bureaucrats will not be replaced. In reality our children will be taught in bigger classes with fewer books and less equipment. Yet the policy-makers themselves are not affected by these measures because they do not send their children to state schools.

My school at present is well-resourced, well-equipped and enjoys high morale but it CANNOT be assumed that further cuts can be made. Our OFSTED inspectors felt that we could not possibly manage our money better and we know we have cut staff and material as much as we can.

There is a point at which the message must be: this far and no further. I am certain that the point has been reached and that we must all get the message across to our political leaders that our children’s future, and the prosperity of the country, depends upon investment in education. Further cuts are planned in this county for next year, and they should be unthinkable.

Chris Healy is currently chairman of HAWSHA, the Hereford Worcester Association of Secondary Headteachers.