Commenting on a Sutton Trust survey of school leaders which finds primary schools hit hardest by funding pressures, Daniel Kebede, General Secretary of the National Education Union, said:
"Primary schools play a critical role in the education journey of young people, but their hands are being tied by real-terms funding cuts. It is shocking that three quarters are having to reduce numbers of teaching assistants, just to make ends meet. The Government's failure to properly fund support-staff pay deals is what lies at the heart of this.
"Successive surveys have shown that schools across the country are having to drop resources and cut staffing to the bone in order to survive. This repeatedly falls on deaf ears, however, and the Government allows it not only to continue but to worsen.
"After 14 years of chronic Conservative cuts, 70% of schools in England have less funding in real terms than in 2010. One in eight local-authority-maintained schools were in deficit in 2022-23, the highest number on record since schools took control of their own bank balances in 1999. It is striking, too, that the Sutton Trust's latest survey finds that half of schools are redeploying pupil premium money to plug gaps elsewhere. Taken together, this is a clear indication that something has gone seriously wrong with school funding.
"We are also far away from having the right level of SEND support to meet demand, thanks again to short-sighted cuts and the starvation of local authority services through inadequate funding. A third of members told us recently they have no behaviour support team whatsoever, a quarter have no access to an educational psychologist or CAMHS. Schools are having to pick up the pieces when referrals get stuck in a queue or are rejected. Make do and mend is not the answer to the crisis in SEND funding.
"This Government is not serious about education. It must wake up to the reality in schools up and down the country and provide the funding that is needed to allow schools to fully deliver the service they want to provide and that parents rightly expect."