London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Sep 18, 2025

Leading Tories call on new PM to tackle crisis facing schools over soaring costs

Leading Tories call on new PM to tackle crisis facing schools over soaring costs

Exclusive: warnings of damage to children’s education for years to come without major intervention

Leading Conservatives including two former Tory education secretaries have urged the incoming prime minister to address rising cost pressures on schools as a matter of urgency, as head teachers struggle to pay soaring energy and wage bills.

With the start of the new academic year just days away, many schools in England are already overwhelmed by energy price rises in excess of 200% – with worse to come – plus the additional cost of unfunded pay rises and mounting inflation.

Without additional funding, school leaders are warning of redundancies, bigger class sizes and cuts to the curriculum, which they say could damage children’s education for years to come. Schools are not covered by the cap on household energy bills.

Kenneth Baker, who was education secretary from 1986 to 1989, said schools would go into the red without government intervention. “We’re heading into a really ghastly two-year period and it’s going to require remarkable leadership to come out of this smiling,” he said.

Justine Greening, who was education secretary under Theresa May, said children and schools were facing an “education double-hit” after the pandemic.

“Education has been badly disrupted by Covid and now schools budgets are being drastically eaten away by inflation, meaning there’s less to invest in young people’s futures,” said Greening, who founded the Social Mobility Pledge, a scheme aimed at broadening social mobility and opportunity.

“Education has to be at the heart of the new government’s levelling up strategy, whoever is running it, so the pressures on school budgets can’t be ignored.”

There has been criticism of the two Tory leadership contenders, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, who have both spoken in favour of grammar schools, but have said less about the issues facing schools now.

Lord Baker said: “All the attention has been on the health service; the education service has not really featured for the leadership candidates. They’ve just touched on it.

“I think the new education secretary will have to go back and ask for more money, which they probably won’t get, so there’s going to be a huge pressure on schools. Some schools are bound to go in the red. It’s going to be a very critical year and a huge amount of trouble is going to be caused in the education system.

“If they overspend, a big deficit will build up, and how are they ever going to meet that deficit? They can’t. They’re in a cycle of actual financial decline. I think it will be a very difficult time for schools. Teachers are going to try very hard to maintain as high a level of education as they can do. But I think some [schools] will have to go to four days, some may go to three days.

“That creates problems for families. What do they do if the parents are working? We’re heading into a really ghastly two-year period and it’s going to require remarkable leadership to come out of this smiling.”

The last time schools attempted to save money by trimming the school week was in 2017. Many school leaders have disputed claims that such action is on the cards again, and the government has already stressed it expects schools to remain open, morning and afternoon, five days a week.

Robert Halfon, the Tory chair of the Commons education committee, said extra funding for energy bills, or energy caps for schools, would be little more than sticking plaster and instead called on the next government to tackle poverty by introducing a radical programme for change that had the scale and vision of Lyndon Johnson’s expansion of US welfare legislation in the 1960s.

“Whoever becomes the new government, they need to listen to Mr Johnson and I don’t mean Boris Johnson, I mean President Lyndon B Johnson. In 1965 he introduced a landmark war on poverty,” said Halfon.

“We’ve had big debates during the leadership contest about the NHS and the economy and the cost of living, yet education seems to have fallen by the wayside. When [Lyndon] Johnson got in, it was the cornerstone of his war on poverty. We need the equivalent of that here.”

A Department for Education spokesperson said the government recognised schools – much like the wider economy –were facing increased costs.

“Cost increases should be seen in the wider context of funding for schools, with budgets to rise by £7bn by 2024-25, compared with 2021-22, including £4bn in this financial year alone. This is a 7% cash terms a pupil increase compared with 2021-22 and will help schools to meet wider cost pressures, including energy prices and staff salaries,” the spokesperson said.

Halfon, who is supporting Sunak, said the additional funding made available to schools was before the war in Ukraine and its impact on bills. “Liz Truss has talked about increasing defence and health spending. What about education? It’s the major challenge of our times in my view,” said Halfon.

Estelle Morris, a former Labour education secretary, echoed his concerns. “In Birmingham where I chair the [education] partnership it’s a huge issue. My frustration is the lack of honesty on the part of the government. When the heads say the costs are so enormous it’s causing them a problem, the only response you get is ‘We’ve increased the schools budget by X,’” she said.

“Schools are about to go back and as far as I can hear and see, there’s not a sensible conversation going on. Nothing is going to happen unless we’ve got ministers who say: ‘I can see this is a problem.’ Any money they announced as extra, it was never ever ever to do with the increased costs of energy.”

Lady Morris also expressed concern about the state of school buildings. “We can’t have cold schools. It’s against the law. I remember when I was a teacher, if the temperature dropped and we couldn’t keep schools warm – if the boiler broke – we had to send the kids home.

“We can’t be the sort of nation that claims to be trying to steady the ship after all these children have suffered under the pandemic, then say we are closing schools because we can’t pay the electricity or gas bill. We can’t be that kind of country.”

On school opening hours, the DfE spokesperson said: “Regular school attendance is vital for children’s education, development, and wellbeing, and we expect all schools to be open morning and afternoon, five days a week.”

Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “We’re extremely concerned that the new term will see schools and colleges in the midst of a full-blown funding crisis and that they will have to make impossible choices about where to make cuts.

“The problem is that they are facing huge increases in energy bills as well as pay awards for which there is no additional government funding. The last thing they want to do is cut educational provision but with massive extra costs and not enough money to pay for them there is only one way this is going to go.”

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
US Tech Giants Pledge Billions to UK AI Infrastructure Following Starmer's Call
Saudi Arabia cracks down on music ‘lounges’ after conservative backlash
DeepMind and OpenAI Achieve Gold at ‘Coding Olympics’ in AI Milestone
SEC Allows Public Companies to Block Investors from Class-Action Lawsuits
Saudi Arabia Signs ‘Strategic Mutual Defence’ Pact with Pakistan, Marking First Arab State to Gain Indirect Access to Nuclear Strike Capabilities in the Region
Federal Reserve Cuts Rates by Quarter Point and Signals More to Come
Effective and Impressive Generation Z Protest: Images from the Riots in Nepal
European manufacturers against ban on polluting cars: "The industry may collapse"
Sam Altman sells the 'Wedding Estate' in Hawaii for 49 million dollars
Trump: Cancel quarterly company reports and settle for reporting once every six months
Turkish car manufacturer Togg Enters German Market with 5-Star Electric Sedan and SUV to Challenge European EV Brands
US Launches New Pilot Program to Accelerate eVTOL Air Taxi Deployment
Christian Brueckner Released from German Prison after Serving Unrelated Sentence
World’s Longest Direct Flight China Eastern to Launch 29-Hour Shanghai–Buenos Aires Direct Flight via Auckland in December
New OpenAI Study Finds Majority of ChatGPT Use Is Personal, Not Professional
Hong Kong Industry Group Calls for HK$20 Billion Support Fund to Ease Property Market Stress
Joe Biden’s Post-Presidency Speaking Fees Face Weak Demand amid Corporate Reluctance
Charlie Kirk's murder will break the left's hateful cancel tactics
Kash Patel erupts at ‘buffoon’ Sen. Adam Schiff over Russiagate: ‘You are the biggest fraud’
Homeland Security says Emmy speech ‘fanning the flames of hatred’ after Einbinder’s ‘F— ICE’ remark
Charlie Kirk’s Alleged Assassin Tyler Robinson Faces Death Penalty as Charges Formally Announced
Actor, director, environmentalist Robert Redford dies at 89
The conservative right spreads westward: a huge achievement for 'Alternative for Germany' in local elections
JD Vance Says There Is “No Unity” with Those Who Celebrate Charlie Kirk’s Killing, and he is right!
Trump sues the 'New York Times' for an astronomical sum of 15 billion dollars
Florida Hospital Welcomes Its Largest-Ever Baby: Annan, Nearly Fourteen Pounds at Birth
U.S. and Britain Poised to Finalize Over $10 Billion in High-Tech, Nuclear and Defense Deals During Trump State Visit
China Finds Nvidia Violated Antitrust Laws in Mellanox Deal, Deepens Trade Tensions with US
US Air Force Begins Modifications on Qatar-Donated Jet Amid Plans to Use It as Air Force One
Pope Leo Warns of Societal Crisis Over Mega-CEO Pay, Citing Tesla’s Proposed Trillion-Dollar Package
Poland Green-Lights NATO Deployment in Response to Major Russian Drone Incursion
Elon Musk Retakes Lead as World’s Richest After Brief Ellison Surge
U.S. and China Agree on Framework to Shift TikTok to American Ownership
London Daily Podcast: London Massive Pro Democracy Rally, Musk Support, UK Economic Data and Premier League Results Mark Eventful Weekend
This Week in AI: Meta’s Superintelligence Push, xAI’s Ten Billion-Dollar Raise, Genesis AI’s Robotics Ambitions, Microsoft Restructuring, Amazon’s Million-Robot Milestone, and Google’s AlphaGenome Update
Le Pen Tightens the Pressure on Macron as France Edges Toward Political Breakdown
Musk calls for new UK government at huge pro-democracy rally in London, but Britons have been brainwashed to obey instead of fighting for their human rights
Elon Musk responds to post calling for the murder of Erika Kirk, widow of Charlie Kirk: 'Either we fight back or they will kill us'
Czech Republic signs €1.34 billion contract for Leopard 2A8 main battle tanks with delivery from 2028
USA: Office Depot Employees Refused to Print Poster in Memory of Charlie Kirk – and Were Fired
Proposed U.S. Bill Would Allow Civil Suits Against Judges Who Release Repeat Violent Offenders
Penske Media Sues Google Over “AI Overviews,” Claiming It Uses Journalism Without Consent and Destroys Traffic
Indian Student Engineers Propose “Project REBIRTH” to Protect Aircraft from Crashes Using AI, Airbags and Smart Materials
French Debt Downgrade Piles Pressure on Macron’s New Prime Minister
US and UK Near Tech, Nuclear and Whisky Deals Ahead of Trump Trip
One in Three Europeans Now Uses TikTok, According to the Chinese Tech Giant
Could AI Nursing Robots Help Healthcare Staffing Shortages?
NATO Deploys ‘Eastern Sentry’ After Russian Drones Violate Polish Airspace
Anesthesiologist Left Operation Mid-Surgery to Have Sex with Nurse
Tens of Thousands of Young Chinese Get Up Every Morning and Go to Work Where They Do Nothing
×