Report Overview
The Sutton Trust surveyed 1,361 teachers in its annual teacher polling through the National Foundation for Educational Research Teacher Voice Omnibus survey, highlighting how budget cuts are affecting schools across the country.
See the Sutton Trust/EEF response to the National Funding Formula consultation here.
Key findings
- Almost a third (30%) of heads say the funding they get for poorer pupils is being used to plug gaps in their school’s budget.
- Almost two-thirds (65%) of the secondary school heads polled said that their school had cut back on teaching staff to save money. Four-fifths (80%) said they had cut back on either teaching staff or teaching assistants and 50% said they had cut both.
- Schools with more disadvantaged intakes were more likely to report cuts to staff too. Teachers in London and the North East were most likely to report staff cuts and pupil premium funding being used to plug gaps.
- In terms of priorities for pupil premium funding, most teachers cited early intervention schemes (27%), followed by one-to-one tuition (12%) and teaching assistants (12%). However almost a fifth (17%) said they didn’t know what their school’s main priority was.
- 72% of secondary senior leaders said they had considered research evidence on the impact of different approaches and programmes; while six out of ten said they had used the Sutton Trust-EEF Teaching and Learning Toolkit too.