“It is no surprise that education funding is the top issue for senior leaders and teachers.
“This is because the financial situation is absolutely desperate. Many schools are having to set in-year deficit budgets because they don’t have enough funding and they will then have to implement cost-cutting measures to balance their books in future years.
“In many cases, this is very likely to mean increased class sizes and cuts to the curriculum offer, as well as to the pastoral and additional academic support that schools provide.
“The problem is caused by the fact that the level of school funding has not increased in line with rising costs in a lot of schools and this compounds the impact of real-terms cuts over the course of the last decade.
“The government claims that school funding is at a record high, but the Institute for Fiscal Studies describes these claims as unhelpful to public debate. This is because school funding was at a record high almost every year prior to 2010 and the fact that this has not been the case since 2010 reflects the fact that there have been historically large cuts.”