Budget cuts responsible for 100 school redundancies

By September this year Wrexham schools will have made 100 teachers and school staff redundant as a result of a £5.4 million budget cut to schools.

The revelation was made to councillors at Wrexham County Borough Council’s Lifelong Learning Scrutiny Committee as it examined the impact of school budget cuts made during the last financial year.

In April 2024 the council announced it would be cutting the schools budget – which represents a third of all council spending – by £5.4m forcing schools to find savings.

And Lead Member for Education Cllr Phil Wynn said he feared the situation could get worse.

“My deepest worry is that in December, if local authorities in Wales don’t get a good revenue support grant settlement, that is going to seriously compound the challenges local authorities will face,” he said.

Report

According to the report 40 teachers, teaching assistants, admin staff and contract workers were made redundant in September last year as schools tried to get out of deficit.

So high were the number of redundancies that Wrexham Council had to more than double the funding it sets aside annually to cover school redundancy payments, from £200,000 to £403,906.

Despite this 16 schools in the county borough – almost a quarter – remained in deficit and are expected to apply for licensed deficit requests by the end of this month.

Licensed deficit requests are a form of overdraft schools can apply for from the local authority. If approved, schools must demonstrate they can repay the overdraft within three years.

But with savings still needed, a further 60 school staff are expected to be made redundant by this September, bringing the total impacted by the cuts to 100.

And there are concerns that the licensed deficit system is working like a vicious circle to compound schools’ budget challenges.

“We live in unprecedented times,” said Labour group leader Cllr Dana Davies. “We need to have a consistent policy for school redundancies.

“We’re asking schools to table licensed deficits for three years to pay back what they know they need to pay now. If we don’t give them consistent policy around corporate funding for redundancies all that’s going to happen is that deficit will grow each year and the only way they can service it is to make more redundancies.

“We need to make a corporate commitment to increase the pot for redundancies because they won’t have the time over the three years to pay it back if they have to cover the cost.”

Falling birthrates

Lead member for Education Cllr Phil Wynn said the level of redundancy support for schools would be considered once the final figures were confirmed.

“We will be as pragmatic as we can,” he said. “A political discussion was taken last time to increase the amount required and once we have the final figures I am certain a political discussion will be taken again.”

Falling birthrates are further making it more difficult for schools to climb out of deficit positions. Historically schools could look at projected trends in pupil numbers and identify future increases to help them show where they could return to a positive financial position.

However according to Cllr Wynn all birthrate trends are continuing to decline across Wrexham, further increasing the need for schools to review staffing numbers.

“There is a reducing birthrate in Wrexham,” he said. “That has been happening for two or three years. One would naturally expect that as pupil numbers drop schools reconfigure their school staffing structure to match their needs and deliver the curriculum.

“That will contribute to some of the redundancies we are facing but many are just because schools haven’t got the funds.

“Having fewer staff will have ramifications but it’s up to each school head to demonstrate how they can deliver the curriculum in a safe way.”