Schools would be 'significantly impacted' if teachers have a five per cent pay rise as cost of living bites, says Peterborough education chief

Peterborough’s education chief has warned the cost of living could bite at city schools, as a new academic year begins.

Most pupils in the city returned to class this week following the summer break – and everyone is hoping for a return to some sort of normality following two years of disruption thanks to COVID.

But with the cost of living crisis at the forefront of everyone’s minds, schools will face a new challenge this year.

“A pay increase that’s anything above three or four percent is going to have a significant impact.”

Jonathan Lewis, director of education for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough said: “We are lucky in Peterborough, our schools of relatively well funded. We are not rich by any means, but where we sit compared to other schools nationally we are funded, so that protects us a little bit.

"Schools have reserves, and they have enough reserves to see them through.

"We did invest quite heavily about nine years ago on energy saving measures so things like solar panels, energy, performance contracts, insulation, lighting, and I'm hoping those benefits are coming through with less costs.

"Obviously what we can’t do is sustain that long-term, and I think the energy crisis is one element of it.”Schools probably spend 10 per cent on utilities, but the biggest cost that they face is pay – eighty per cent of budgets is spent on staff, so a pay increase that’s anything above three or four percent is going to have a significant impact.

"There is an increase in funding for next year, but what has been announced so far won’t cover the cost.

"We know there are families in Peterborough who will be struggling, and we would encourage parents to access what support there is now. Free school meals are really important, and we would encourage parents to apply for it – it doesn’t matter if you are accepted, or even take the meal if you are, but by applying you get the meal funded but we also get in the region of £1,000 to £1,300 extra per child.”

“We coped incredibly well through COVID”

Mr Lewis was full of praise for staff, parents and pupils for the work that has been carried out during COVID – work that has seen the city progress in the school league tables.While data has not been published nationally, Mr Lewis said that in 2019, before the pandemic, Peterborough sat second bottom of the primary school league tables – but the latest data showed that while the city was still near the bottom, it had jumped six places.

He said: “I have to say we coped incredibly well through COVID. We had higher attendance than most other local authorities, more schools open, less issues. Whatever the next term will bring, we're ready for it.

"We will be working very closely with public health. We're worried generally about respiratory illness like flu as well as Covid. We'll deal with it will keep running schools as much as we can.”

Mr Lewis said that like a number of authorities around the country, Peterborough had faced a number of challenges – but everyone had come together to keep the education system running.

He said: “We've got a lot of families in the city that don't have access to IT equipment, so, we had to do a lot of work buying laptops, giving children access to equipment.

"We really focused in on doing the right thing in the first first lockdown, making sure children were safe while supported, you know, as much education as we could manage. But working with parents was probably the key part. It was all about keeping people informed. I think we went above and beyond to make sure that education was good.

"I think in Peterborough it brought us together, and we are stronger and better. I think we'll come out of this a better authority as a group of schools, early year settings and colleges than we went into it.”

Mr Lewis said the hard work of schools had paid off, and was proud of results achieved by pupils taking their GCSEs.

"We've gone up six places this time, so it's going in the right direction”

He said: “I'm really pleased with what I've seen. There's clearly work still be done, but the progress that we've made is continuing.”

He also praised the work of primary schools, where the jump was made in the league tables.

He said: “We've gone up six places this time, so it's going in the right direction. I’m really pleased now, there are huge amounts of work still to be done but I have to give great credit to those leaders who have worked during COVID, to actually continue to work on children's education, get them engaged and improve. It's a fantastic outcome.

"Improving reading outcomes has been top for us and I think that's starting to show in the results. The work we've done on phonics programs in primary schools, the focus secondaries are putting in on, on improving English results, is showing and provisionally our English results are in line with national results.

Huge credit to teachers, teaching assistants and caretakers

“It comes down to good quality leadership. We've got some fantastic heads across the city that they're making a difference. Our recruitment work that we've done and has made a difference. Job vacancies are down, people want to come to Peterborough and there is a real buzz around education and what's going on.

"It's very, very pleasing to play a small role in that but huge credit has to go to the leaders in the schools and the teachers, the teaching assistants the caretakers - everyone in a school that plays a role in educational outcomes because it's definitely working. But we've got a lot long way to go.”