James Ellis, NEU lead rep, personal capacity
The decimation of local authorities and the general funding crisis in education continues to drive more and more schools into the arms of Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs), falsely promising a panacea. However, MATs are no solution to the funding crisis – they can make it much worse.
National Education Union (NEU) members who work for schools that are part of the University of Brighton Academy Trust (UBAT) have seen this firsthand. We are currently involved in a dispute over the way UBAT has been managing its finances and the impact that has had on our members’ jobs and workload. On average, MATs retain between 5-7% of a school’s budget to pay for their central services. UBAT has been withholding an average of 13% of school budgets, with some schools losing over 25% in some years!
This lack of funding has had a devastating impact on frontline services. We’ve seen workload increasing, cuts to budgets and essential services, and damaging restructures and redundancies. And where has this money gone? It goes towards a bloated central academy budget, with huge amounts spent on a large executive team, corporate marketing and outside consultants. This is public money that should be going towards the education of our students!
We have had a very successful strike campaign so far. We have won strike ballots in eight schools and taken five days of coordinated strike action. We have won workload charters, halted redundancies, saved essential services, and forced UBAT to agree to completely change their funding model. Our action has contributed to some significant changes in the Trust leadership.
However, ultimately, we will either end up in a reformed version of UBAT or as part of a different MAT. What we really need is to return to local authority control!
Costs
The cost to the taxpayer of highly paid senior managers in schools has rocketed under England’s academies scheme, analysis by Warwick Mansell and the Case for State Education reported last year. He compared the performance of the ten largest local authorities and the 50 largest MATs, both of which are responsible for about 850,000 pupils.
In 2021-22, the ten largest local authorities spent £3.7 million on the salaries of employees of more than £130,000. The 50 largest academy trusts spent £27.8 million and had seven times as many people paid at least £130,000 a year. Since 2010, the leaders of the ten largest academy trusts have seen salary increases four times that of experienced classroom teachers.
The 50 largest trusts spent £68.2 million, or £80 per pupil, on six-figure salaries for their employees in 2021-22. This was 2.8 times the comparable sum of £24.4 million, or £28 per pupil, in the local authorities. If these academy trusts were spending at the same level on high salaries as were the local authorities, this would generate savings of £43.9 million overall per year, or £4.4 million per large local authority area.
This cannot be allowed to continue. Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer have gone to great lengths to tell us there is no money available for public services and that things will get worse before they get better.
We cannot afford things to get any worse. Our schools are literally crumbling. £4.4 billion is needed to repair the school estate. 33,000 extra teachers are needed; over a million pupils are being taught in classes of over 30. £4.6 billion is needed to end the crisis in high-needs funding. To return education funding to the levels of other OECD countries, i.e. 5% of GDP, would require £20 billion.
The NEU should support any local action aimed at halting further privatisation in education, including placing demands on councils to stop and reverse academisation.
Campaign
Socialist Party members are calling on the NEU to launch an immediate national campaign to oppose academisation and fight for a return to democratic local authority control. As a first step, we should demand that the government creates a legal route for academised schools and colleges to return to local authority control – there is no reason that cannot be done immediately.
Privatisation in education must be reversed. The NEU must demand full public funding for education from this Labour government.
