Hundreds of councillors urge government to pump billions of pounds into cash-strapped schools

'The cuts to school budgets have reached epidemic levels,' letter to Damian Hinds warns

Parents protest outside a conference in Birmingham where education secretary Damian Hinds was speaking to call for more school funding (Save Our Schools West Midlands)

Hundreds of local councillors are calling on the education secretary to urge the government to pump billions of pounds into funding schools.

In a letter to Damian Hinds, signed by more than 1,000 councillors, they say many schools are now “desperately overwhelmed” as more students are competing for fewer resources.

The current situation is “not tenable” amid cuts to local council services and a recruitment and retention crisis across the profession, they add.

It follows a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) last year which said total school spending per pupil in England has fallen by 8 per cent in real terms between 2009-10 and 2017-18.

Headteachers across the country have spoken out about squeezed budgets forcing them to have to ask parents for basic essentials like toilet roll, while some have had to shorten the school week.

The letter, due to be handed in to the Department for Education (DfE) in Westminster, says: "Many schools are now desperately overwhelmed as more and more students are competing for fewer and fewer resources. Compounded by biting cuts to local council services, in addition to the teacher recruitment and retention crisis, the current settlement is not tenable."

Southwark councillor Maggie Browning, the National Education Union's (NEU) councillors network convener, said: "The cuts to school budgets have reached epidemic levels in England and Wales. Increasingly, tighter funds mean schools across the country are narrowing their curriculum and cutting subjects like drama and art, which is a travesty.”

She added: "Teachers' workloads have become unsustainable as they are asked to do more and more with less, including larger class sizes and fuller timetables with less support.”

Ms Browning said that this was “fuelling” the recruitment and retention crisis across the country, adding it was “deeply disruptive” to the learning of students.

The letter comes as a new study from the UCL Institute of Education has found that nearly half of new teachers consider leaving within 10 years.

More than two in three said their main reason for wanting to teach was to ‘make a difference’ - however, once they started teaching, the reality of daily life as a teacher dulled their enthusiasm.

For those who had left, the reasons given were to improve work/life balance (75 per cent), workload (71 per cent), and a target-driven culture (57 per cent).

A Department for Education (DfE) spokesman said: "School funding in England is at its highest ever level and since 2017 the government has given every local authority in England more money for every pupil in every school, while allocating the biggest increases to the schools that have been most underfunded.

"In the last year we have also announced an extra £400m of capital funding for schools from the Treasury. Nonetheless, we do recognise the budgeting challenges schools face. That is why the education secretary has been making a strong case for education spending across government ahead of the next spending review.”