On a visit to Liverpool, Bridget Phillipson said cabinet officials recognise the ‘enormous pressure’ on town halls
Bridget Phillipson, Secretary of State for Education(Image: Getty Images)
The government faces “an enormous challenge” to fix finances for struggling councils like Wirral, the education secretary has said amid fears school deficits could wipe out half its budget. Cash-strapped Wirral Council could be facing a staggering black hole in its school finance budgets of more than £200m by the end of the decade.
The figure would represent half of the local authority’s entire budget. A stark warning came in auditor Grant Thornton’s most recent report into the council’s financial accounts for 2023-24.
This was published ahead of an extraordinary meeting on January 14, called as the council teeters on the edge of a Section 114 notice and effective bankruptcy.
At the moment, any deficit in council school budgets, known as the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG), is kept off the council’s revenue budget due to an override granted by the government in 2020 to councils across the country who were struggling to balance the books. This is because as demand for special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) provision has grown, costs in high needs budgets have shot up too.
Speaking to the ECHO, Bridget Phillipson, Secretary of State for Education, acknowledged the challenges faced by town halls like that on the Wirral. She said: “I know councils have been under enormous pressure especially where it comes to supporting children with SEND.
“It’s why at the budget we invested an extra £2.3bn into schools with £1bn of that being for children with SEND. We’re also investing in capital spending so we can create more specialist provision within mainstream because I know that parents want more opportunities to send their children to local schools.”
Mrs Phillipson, who was in Liverpool to promote a 100-year partnership between the UK and Ukraine, took aim at the Conservatives for their approach to funding while in power. She said: “The last government completely neglected the SEND system, I know parents have lost confidence and children are not getting the right outcomes, that’s why reforming the system together with parents, with schools and across education will be crucial.
“We’ll be setting out more this year about how we intend to do that, it’s a complex area that we know we have to get right and I want to make sure we listen to parents to do that.”
The Houghton and Sunderland South MP said cabinet ministers were aware of the issues local authorities like Wirral faced and the current situation could not continue. She said: “We inherited an enormous challenge when it comes to council finances.
“We know councils across the country have been struggling for some time. The Chancellor at the budget did set out more investment for councils, including with a focus on early help and support for families and more money going into schools and more money for children with SEND.
“While there are big financial pressures that councils are under, I think the challenges are greater in that we know we can’t just carry on with the system for children with SEND, we have to reform the system so we deliver earlier and better support for families.”