THE headteacher of a Caerphilly school has spoken about a “crisis in funding” in the education system after school leaders said redundancies could be likely due to rising costs.

NAHT Cymru, the school leaders’ union, warned education “is truly in a perilous state” as it published its findings this week after surveying more than 670 school leaders from across Wales.

Seventy-three per cent of respondents said they would have to make teaching assistants redundant or cut their hours due to budgetary constraints, while 61 per cent said they were looking to reduce the number of teachers or teaching hours.

Lee Jarvis, headteacher at St Martin’s School in Caerphilly, said schools have become reliant on teachers and support staff essentially volunteering above and beyond their contracted hours.

“There really is a crisis of funding in our education system and it is not right that our children are being educated in schools that are falling down around them and where school leaders cannot recruit teachers because teachers and support staff are not paid properly for the work that they do and are not paid for the additional work that they do to keep schools running,” he said.

“Simply put, if teachers and support staff only worked their contracted hours, the entire schools system would crumble overnight.

“Schools are only functioning due to the commitment of the people who are committed to the children and therefore put an additional 50 per cent of their time into them free of charge and to the detriment of their own families and lives. 

“In essence the school system runs on 50 per cent government funding and 50 per cent volunteers.”

Mr Jarvis added that many school buildings dated back to the 20th century and were “without insulation, modern heating systems and double glazing”, meaning leaders faced “making the decision between employing teachers or heating the school or making people redundant in order to fix the holes in the roof”.

“This really is not the environment we want our children to be educated in,” he said.

“A school should be a warm welcoming friendly place to be where children who face hardships at home as a result of the cost-of-living crisis come to be cared for and inspired so that their brilliant minds can be opened up to the possibilities that await them in the future. 

“As we all know, everything in our daily lives now costs more and this is magnified tenfold in schools.

“The weekly catering bill has increased by 10 per cent, heating costs have increased by at least 50 per cent, building repairs due to supply chain issues and material costs cannot be funded and supply staff costs are now on average costing a school £250 a day to cover for the vacancies in teaching that cannot be filled as people are steering away from the profession as a result of poor pay and conditions. 

“This is a crisis and it is a crisis at the heart of our communities that will destroy our future prospects as a nation and it is simply a crisis due to substantive and significant underfunding for generations. 

“Our children deserve better and our schools are at the heart of our country’s recovery and need the investment to be able to grow future generations minds to prevent future crises.”

A Welsh Government spokesperson said it was committed to doing everything they could to support stretched public services, but needed support from the UK Government.

“We recognise that high levels of inflation and energy costs are causing financial pressures on our public services, and we remain committed to doing everything we can to support them.

“The significant levels of funding needed requires the UK Government to act urgently. The Welsh Government’s budget is now worth £4 billion less over the next three years, and that is before budget cuts the UK Government is potentially going to announce next week.

“Wales’ funding must be restored by the UK Government to help protect jobs and support our public services.

“We acknowledge that figures published last week show that overall school budget reserves remain very high. Local authorities and schools are already discussing how to deploy their reserves and we will support them in that.”