Caerphilly schools face £4.3m deficit as costs rise

Collectively, the borough’s schools are expected to be more than £4.3 million in the red next April, amid efforts to reconcile the need for investment with falling birth rates.

The council’s leader will push the Welsh Government for millions in further funding for ALN, following calls for action from a cross-party scrutiny committee.

Chief education officer Keri Cole said councils nationwide were tackling school finance pressures, but Caerphilly was facing “particular” issues around pupil numbers – a major factor in deciding how much money each school receives.

“We have a lot of surplus places in schools,” she told the council’s joint scrutiny committee. “What that means is we’re putting resources into buildings that are becoming more and more empty.” 

A cross-party working group, set up to “systematically” examine falling birth rates, is “looking dispassionately at the figures and what makes sense going forward”, and is “poised to make some clear recommendations” for the future of the borough’s schools.

Cllr Kevin Etheridge said he was “very concerned” about growing financial pressures on the borough’s schools.

While primary schools are forecast to collectively report a £1.7 million budget surplus this year, secondary and other sectors are estimated to record a £6 million shortfall, resulting in the overall deficit prediction.

The committee’s chairman, Cllr Gary Johnston, asked why some schools had considerable budget surpluses while others were recording overspends.

“The reality is schools are very different,” replied Ms Cole. “If a school is fortunate to have a very experienced team of staff, the bill for that team is going to be a lot higher than if they had a lot of younger, less experienced staff.”

Ms Cole described a growing realisation nationally that a funding formula review was needed, because schools have “completely different profiles”.

The committee heard new schools typically have much lower maintenance costs than older sites, but even then there are outliers.

Ysgol Gyfun Cwm Rhymni has two “very modern buildings… however they are seven miles apart,” explained Ms Cole.

“Every time a member of staff travels from one site to the other to deliver the equivalent, they lose a lesson on the timetable, so they have to employ more staff.”

She added inconsistencies in funding during and after the Covid-19 pandemic were also a contributing factor to the overall malaise.

“Covid masked a lot of things,” Ms Cole said. “Things were heading towards this position before Covid, and then Covid meant that schools were given a lot of extra money, but the reality is… the increasing pressures of ALN and the increasing number and volume of those pressures mean that schools need to really tighten their belts going forward.”

“Schools took on lots of teaching assistants through Covid, through the funding that was available, and those teaching assistants are now deployed to support children with ALN, in the main,” she explained. “Schools don’t want to let these trained and helpful members of staff go, but the reality is that schools are funded on the number of pupils, and so sometimes these difficult decisions have to be made.”

However, Ms Cole said she remained “optimistic” the council could tackle schools’ financial pressures, buoyed by positive feedback from Estyn in 2024.

But she warned schools would be best-placed to overcome funding shortages if they tackled them head-on.

“If schools are slower or less inclined to make those tough calls early, that sometimes leads to a higher deficit,” she said.

Cllr Christine Bissex-Foster urged colleagues to back a motion requesting more ALN funding from the Welsh Government.

A supplementary budget plan failed in July when the new Plaid Cymru government couldn’t agree an ALN deal with Labour MSs.

In the council chamber, a majority of committee members supported the motion, despite some Plaid councillors saying the government’s last budget offer had been more generous than that proposed under the previous Labour administration.

“I will write to the Welsh Government as requested by the cross-party committee,” local authority leader Cllr Jamie Pritchard said after the meeting.

“This ask of the Welsh Government is what the whole of local government and unions have been calling for. I know how beneficial millions of pounds of ring-fenced ALN provision would be for schools all over Caerphilly County Borough.”

A Welsh Government spokesperson said: “We remain committed to strengthening the ALN system, so that children and young people receive the right support, at the right time, to meet their needs.

“We continue to engage constructively with parties in the Senedd as we develop our budget.”