School Funding Letter

Dear Parents/carers

School Funding

 You may have seen a number of stories in the press around school funding in recent months. There have been worrying headlines and we felt it important that we let you know, as far as we are able at this stage, how this will affect our school.

 School budgets across the country have been under pressure for some time. The senior leadership team at Mayfield has been grappling with the funding challenges, leading to a number of tough decisions being made with regards to staffing and the services we are able to afford.

 Our school is not alone. The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) has shown that seven out of ten school leaders think that their budgets will be unsustainable by the 2019 academic year. In July, the Department for Education re-allocated £1.3 billion for schools from existing budgets, but this is over two years and is not sufficient. Nationally, there is a £2bn gap in funding each year until 2022. It’s clear that the Treasury must now provide additional resources to resolve the funding crisis.

 We will work hard to ensure that cuts have the least impact on teaching possible. However, rising costs and a frozen budget mean that tough decisions will have to be taken. We cannot guarantee that such cuts will not impact on teaching, despite doing our upmost to prevent this.

 Please be assured that we will take the utmost care with budgets, to ensure all the money we have is spent effectively on your children. We are also letting the local authority and government know just how serious the funding crisis has become.

 We promise to let you know you in plenty of time if our budget means we’ll have to take a significant decision on staffing or activities.

 Yours sincerely,

 Belinda Ewart

Headteacher