Nearly £2.5 million to be axed from Warrington high schools

Data shows that a combination of inflation, high running costs, and reduced funding will lead to sweeping cuts across schools next year.

The combined amount of money being lost by secondary schools across the town for the 2023/24 academic year totals £2,465,802.

Education secretary can't confirm that schools won’t see a real-term budget cut https://t.co/ooV3FAVa4D

— PoliticsHome (@politicshome) November 9, 2022

Data seen by the Warrington Guardian shows that every secondary school in the town is due to face cuts to their funding.

Many primary schools have also been hit with cuts, though three primary schools will actually be financially better off next year.

The secondary school that is facing the largest cut - according to the data - is Great Sankey High School.

Great Sankey is reportedly going to be nearly half-a-million pounds worse off next year, as the school faces cuts of £432,784, which amounts to around £236 lost per pupil.

Despite this, the school facing the biggest cuts per student is UTC, in the centre of Warrington, which is looking at a cut of £737 per pupil at the school.

We have compiled the figures in the database below, which comprises 13 secondary schools in Warrington - you can search for the relevant school in the search bar.

A report was released this week by the National Association of Headteachers (NAHT) that claimed more than 90 per cent of schools are being forced to make budget cuts in the next academic year.

The report also states that half of schools are considering reducing the number of teachers employed, whereas 66 per cent of schools are looking into making redundancies among teaching assistant staff.

One of the areas that headteachers have warned may face cuts is the provision of support for students with special educational needs or disabilities (SEND) - despite the fact that the Government's education watchdog, Ofsted, has encouraged schools to provide more SEND support.

A key SEND review proposal is to make mainstream schools ‘more inclusive’.

But years of funding cuts mean all that capacity to provide additional support has been/ is being stripped away: counselling, therapy, mental health.

And the outlook for next year is even more bleak: pic.twitter.com/Lbd80AjX0F

— John Dickens (@JohndickensSW) November 8, 2022

A SEND coordinator at a primary school in Warrington said: "Without the funding to provide extra members of staff, specific intervention (speech and language therapy, motor skills interventions, social communication groups) is just not possible.

"I worry that as time goes on, there will be even more needs to meet with even fewer resources and this does scare me."

Total real-term cuts to primary and secondary schools in Warrington are predicted to amount to £5,126,463 in the next academic year.