The Observer view on the energy crisis: the price of warm schools mustn’t be fewer teachers | Observer editorial

Schools started reopening for the autumn term last week under inauspicious circumstances. Barely out of the last acute crisis of the pandemic, the next is already upon them. Headteachers have been spending the summer recasting budgets, trying to work out what can be cut in order to make space for rocketing energy bills and higher wages without having a detrimental impact on their pupils. But they are not financial magicians and one of the myriad ways in which the cost of living crisis will harm children will be through its impact on their education.

Schools have faced tough times in recent years. Per-pupil funding fell by 9% between 2010 and 2020, what the Institute for Fiscal Studies describes as the largest cut to school funding in more than 40 years. Schools serving the poorest communities suffered the worst: they saw a drop of 14% in per-pupil funding in real terms. Since 2020, the government has increased funding but it is still slightly lower than in 2010 and, again, schools in the poorest areas have been awarded just over half the increase of those in the most affluent areas.

The pandemic brought a different set of challenges for schools: months of home learning, exams scrapped for two years in a row and periodic closures triggered by Covid cases once they could reopen. We are yet to fully understand the long-term price of this in relation to children’s educational outcomes and mental health. The Education Endowment Foundation has found that, while Covid has negatively affected the attainment of all pupils, the attainment gap between children from poorer and more affluent backgrounds has grown.

There is also evidence that school closures have had a negative impact on children’s mental health. The education select committee has concluded that the pandemic had a “disastrous” affect on children’s academic progress. Yet the government has spent only a fraction of what was recommended by its education recovery commissioner, Kevan Collins, who resigned from his post when the government refused to allocate more. The National Tutoring programme is being run by a private provider that has not only failed to meet its targets of reaching two million children, but earlier this year could not provide even basic details to the education select committee about who was accessing tutoring and in which parts of the country.

It is against this challenging backdrop that schools are facing the corrosive affects of rising energy bills and inflation. Headteachers have to fund pay rises for teachers from existing school budgets. And rising energy costs will further deplete school funds: analysis by the House of Commons Library has found that gas and electricity prices for schools rose by 83% in the first quarter of 2022, but some schools have reported rises in energy bills of more than 300%. Headteacher unions say that some heads have little choice but to pay for this through cutting staff hours, particularly of teaching assistants. Other ways of saving money that schools are reportedly considering are increasing class sizes, reducing curriculum options, cutting back on class trips or restricting their use of heating and telling students to attend in warmer clothes. Some are even reported to be thinking about reducing the hours they spend in school.

This energy crisis has been months in the making yet the government has produced no plan to help schools through it. This seems particularly cruel given the affects of the pandemic on education. If anything, we should be spending much more on catch-up tutoring, extracurricular activities and mental health provision. Yet the impact of energy prices on school budgets will cause further harm, in addition to what living in fuel poverty will mean for children’s health and wellbeing.

It is not just schools; other public services will struggle to cope this winter, including nurseries, care homes and hospitals. Last year, the NHS spent £500m on energy costs; the NHS Confederation said the bill this year would be higher and next year’s higher still. As with schools, NHS trusts will be forced to cut back on other things to compensate for much higher energy costs and inflation, which will result in even longer waiting times and worse health outcomes in a service that has been underfunded and understaffed for over a decade and still suffering badly from the pandemic. Hospital bosses have also warned that rising fuel poverty will have a knock-on impact on demand for the NHS; all this points to this winter crisis being the worst ever for patients.

Action to protect schools, hospitals and other services from the impact of rising energy bills is needed just as urgently as measures to protect small businesses and households. Yet Liz Truss, the leading contender in the Conservative leadership contest, the result of which will be announced tomorrow, has pledged a series of tax cuts that experts believe will cost £50bn a year. This will be impossible to achieve without a significant scaling back of government spending, which will come at the time just when the public realm can least afford it.

Truss needs to drop her plan for tax cuts if she wins and set out an immediate plan to channel support to households, small businesses, schools and hospitals to protect them from the worst impacts of the energy crisis. A failure to act will have far-reaching consequences for many years to come.