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Schools are at breaking point as funding is not keeping up with the expenditure schools face. The government’s funding commitment for schools is not adequate and equates to a real-terms cut in education spending. The situation is critical for schools, so NAHT is campaigning to:

Lobby the government to provide sufficient funding for the education of all pupils 

 

  • Support the School Cuts campaign
  • Lobby for provision of accessible and available health, social care and other therapeutic services to support pupils' educational progress and attainment
  • Lobby for sufficient funding for the High Needs block
  • Lobby for sufficient funding to support pupils with SEND in all mainstream schools
  • Lobby for more funding for early years education; including specific funding to stabilise and protect the maintained nursery school sector
  • Support the Raise the Rate campaign to ensure sufficient funding for students in sixth form / FE / KS5 education
  • Maximise the funding for pupil premium for schools through auto enrolment
  • Press the government to provide appropriate support to schools for financial planning and resource management
  • Develop a better understanding of the unique challenges facing small schools and lobby the government to ensure their long-term sustainability
  • Lobby government to introduce the hard funding formula

Lobby to ensure that schools have sufficient funds to provide a safe environment for pupils and staff

  • Press for the phased removal of asbestos from the school estate
  • Lobby the DfE to secure sufficient capital funding and restoration of the school estate where required
  • Press the government to ensure that health and safety regulations maintain the highest standard of safety within schools
  • Lobby the DfE to support members to effectively manage the school estate

NAHT renews efforts to secure the future of maintained nursery schools

Maintained nursery schools have a critical role to play in the delivery of high-quality early years education, but their future has been left uncertain by the government’s new approach to early years funding. The new national funding formula for the early years that was introduced in April 2017 set out one common early years rate in each local authority for private voluntary and independent (PVI) nursery and nursery classes, based on a view that whilst PVIs have lower staffing costs for unqualified staff but higher fixed costs as they are smaller than primary schools, primary schools have higher staffing costs for teachers but can spread fixed costs across a whole primary school.

Maintained nursery schools lose out on both counts, having highly qualified staff working in smaller settings making for a double whammy of high staffing and fixed costs. The Department for Education therefore initially proposed to provide an additional £56 million to support them for the first two years of the new early years formula, but eventually agreed to extend this to March 2020, the end of the comprehensive spending review, after the extensive press and public pressure led by NAHT and Early Education.

On 4 July, we are relaunching our campaign in partnership with charity Early Education. We are seeking:

  • To secure a long-term commitment to additional funding for maintained nursery school provision beyond the April 2020 cliff edge and also
  • For the DfE to develop a national funding formula for maintained nursery schools that will recognise that they are schools, secure their long-term sustainability and provide greater consistency of funding nationally.
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Our campaigning leaflet sets out how NAHT members working in maintained nursery schools can support our campaign by engaging parents and local politicians and there is also a model template letter for members to write to their MPs which you can find below. 

Join us in campaigning to protect some of our best early years settings.

First published 20 June 2019

First published 20 June 2019
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