Headteachers have described how they are cutting subjects including maths and music, not replacing staff, merging and making class sizes bigger with budgets in “crisis”. More than half (53%) of school leaders in Wales are predicting a budget deficit this academic year with estimates that the deficits run into many millions of pounds affecting all 22 local authority areas.
The bleak finding - nearly double the 29% who reported a deficit last year - comes after school leaders’ union NAHT Cymru surveyed its members. More than a quarter (27%) said they were predicting a deficit for the first time ever in 2024/25 and every single one said they did not receive sufficient funding to meet the needs of all their pupils fully.
Chris Parry, headteacher at Lewis School Pengam, is among heads around Wales forced to cut the curriculum to save costs as he faces a deficit for the first time in his 12 years in the post. He had to withdraw the offer of further maths A level this year and has also stopped running A level music as the school tackles a £300,000 deficit projected to balloon to £1m in three years without action. For the latest Welsh news delivered to your inbox sign up to our newsletter.
Read next: Welsh Government 'benefits squeeze' leaving low income children without free school meals, group warns
Don't miss: Teachers, doctors and civil servants in Wales to get pay rises
Mr Parry said said a combination of factors have left schools without the funds they need including staff pay increases, rising costs of fuel and supplies and changes to funding formulas. Extra funding during and in the immediate aftermath of Covid cushioned pre-existing financial strain but now that has gone.
"At the moment we don't replace staff when they leave and some courses might go. We don't do music A level, that ended last year and we are not offering further maths A level in 2024-25.
"Interventions may also go such as supporting pupils dong GCSEs with additional revision, these are not luxuries but funding is just not available. Our budget, which is just over £3m has not increased this year and to keep our head above water we need around £300,000 more, or 10%.
"If you have deficits they just get bigger. I am not planning redundancies but I am planning not to replace three teaching posts."
On above-inflation teacher pay awards Mr Parry said adequate pay was needed to recruit and maintain high quality staff but they must be fully funded by councils, which has not been the case everywhere: "We are in a crisis, more than half the schools in deficit is a crisis and worse than before Covid."
Tim Newbould, head teacher at Ysgol Penycase Community Primary in Wrexham, said he has cut staff and will have to make redundancies next year as his school faces a £113,000 projected deficit. Mr Newbould, who has run the school for 17 years and only had one other deficit year in that time which was 10 years ago, said policymakers and politicians do not seem to realise how serious the problem in schools is.
He said most of his school's overspend has been meeting "ever-more complex needs" of children. He believes this is a social problem pre-dating Covid and partly blames social media. "We started noticing radical changes [among children] from about 2015 with some children coming in who can't speak, don't know how to interact with others, compromise or cope and have less communication skills. You need more support for them in the classroom.
"This is a whole societal problem It is worrying that the people at the top don't seem to get how much of a problem this is. I think school funding needs to go up by 10 to 20% to even touch the problem."
Mr Newbould said his school's spending on support staff had reduced assaults and exclusions in his school but the money has run out. Last year he lost the equivalent of one and a half full-time teachers and two teaching assistants through not replacing them. Next year he is looking at losing four teaching assistants and one teacher and could not rule out some as redundancies.
NAHT’s report - Falling Short: The Deepening School Funding Crisis in Wales - found school leaders are having to take drastic action including:
Compared with 2021, when NAHT asked school leaders similar questions, they are now around twice as likely to have to be taking these measures. Only three per cent said they didn’t need to make savings, compared to a fifth three years ago.
Other cuts schools are making include:
The survey shows a range of issues are fuelling a "funding crisis", all of which the NAHt said have worsened over the last three years – from support for pupils with additional learning needs, cited by 88% of school leaders, to inflation and increased salaries (55%), supply cover 52%) and changes to local funding formulae (25%).
Separately, almost eight in 10 (79%) reported an increase in parents or carers seeking help due to the cost of living. Close to half (48%) highlighted support for pupils whose mental health had deteriorated.
Laura Doel, national secretary of NAHT Cymru, said: “School leaders simply cannot go on doing more with less. They didn’t sign up to this job to set deficit budgets, cut spending on pupils and lay off teachers and support staff. In the three years since our last survey, the change for the worse is alarming.
“We were shocked that school funding didn’t feature in the first minister’s priority list when she set out her plans for government earlier this week.
“Schools need more resources to allow them focus on driving up standards rather than firefighting increasingly worrying holes in their budgets.
“At the moment, schools and local authorities in Wales are facing really unpalatable choices and we need to work together not only to argue for proper funding but also to identify sustainable, innovative solutions to this crisis.”
NAHT Cymru says the Welsh Government’s ongoing review aimed at replacing the 22 different local authority funding formulae with one coherent system must end what it dubbed "the postcode lottery" around how much individual schools receive.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary at school leaders’ union NAHT, said: “These truly dire findings should set alarm bells ringing for everyone with a stake in children’s education – from parents and carers, to local and national politicians."
The NAHT says school funding should have been "at the top" of the new First Minister’s to do list. After Eluned Morgan set out her priorities for government earlier this week, Laura Doel, national secretary at school leaders’ union NAHT Cymru, said:
“It beggars’ belief that school funding, support for learners with alternative learning needs and staff recruitment and retention didn’t feature in the first minister’s priority list.
“School leaders were clear when we took industrial action over a year ago that schools are buckling under the pressure of chronic underfunding.
“They warned it would have a detrimental impact on the delivery of education and it is. If schools are to drive up standards, they need funding to do so. This is a missed opportunity - funding for schools should have been at the top of the first minister’s in-tray.
“We expect school funding to be picked up in the list of responsibilities promised by the first minister.”
A Welsh Government spokesperson said school funding was a matter for councils: "The amount of funding set aside for school budgets, including funding for school staff, is for local authorities to determine, we do not fund schools directly.
“We have increased local government funding and re-prioritised the education budget so we can protect school funding as much as possible, spending more in areas under the greatest pressure.”
What is happening where you live? Find out by adding your postcode or visit InYourArea
