Half of the schools in Brighton and Hove have budgets in the red and the council may have to bail them out, councillors have been warned.
A report said that 33 out of the 61 council-maintained schools had a licensed deficit – coinciding with the rising number of schools with spare places.
Brighton and Hove City Council’s chief financial officer Nigel Manvell spelt out the picture to the council’s Strategy, Finance and City Regeneration Committee yesterday (Thursday 7 December).
The government provides a “dedicate schools grant” – totalling £198 million this year – and the council distributes the money to schools.
But if schools overspend by too much, the council would have to provide funding to enable them to balance their books.
The “licensed deficits” in the current financial year totalled £4.39 million, councillors were told, just less than the £4.54 million surplus at the end of 2022-23, the most recent full financial year.
The Labour deputy leader of the council Jacob Taylor asked whether a potential £573,000 overspend – beyond the surplus – would have to come out the council’s budget.
Councillor Taylor also asked if the funding shortfall was linked to fewer children going to school in Brighton and Hove, with funding based on pupil numbers. He said: “Is this normal? Is this how councils normally operate?
“Is this how Brighton has historically operated in that most of our schools are in deficit and we have to … bail out schools?”
Mr Manvell said that the budgets were a “close call” this year and the council worked to help schools to achieve a balanced financial position.
If too many schools were in the red, then the council would have to pay towards balancing their budgets.
He said that it was “highly unusual” to have more than half the schools in deficit, adding: “I don’t know the position nationally.
“I do know there are many authorities that do have schools with licensed deficits. Whether there are any reaching this extent, I’m not clear.
“I would imagine it would be a similar situation in authorities that are experiencing falling pupil numbers and falling roll numbers.
“And that certainly is what is causing the issues in Brighton and Hove, alongside below-inflation uplifts of the dedicated schools grant over a number of years.”
The council is currently carrying out public consultations into the proposed closure of two primary schools and proposed cuts in admission numbers at nine other schools because of hundreds of empty places.
There are 2,610 primary school places in reception each year at the moment but the council forecast that just 1,959 children would require a school place in 2025 and 1,948 in 2026.
Next Thursday (14 December), councillors are due to debate petitions objecting to the proposed closure of two undersubscribed primary schools – St Bartholomew’s, in Brighton, and St Peter’s, in Portslade.
Parents at Goldstone Primary School, in Hove, and St Luke’s, in Brighton, are also campaigning against cuts to their intakes by 30 reception pupils from 2025.
Consultations are open on the council’s website and include proposals to cut admission numbers at Brunswick, Queen’s Park, Rudyard Kipling, Saltdean and Woodingdean primary schools and Patcham and Stanford infant schools from September 2025.
Cut the council funding to Allsorts and Gendered Intelligence. They have no place in schools. Nor does CRT.
Get back to proper teaching and the aim of producing inteligent young adults who can think for themselves and make their own life decisions and choices, minus questionable adult influences. And stop messing with children’s toilets. Some girls are now refusing to go to school if they have to share toilets and changing rooms with boys. They are also being put in harm’s way by creating the perfect conditions for assaults – completely contrary to school safeguarding duties. My cousins both taught for 40 years and retired around a decade ago. Every time I see them they say ‘Thank God I retired when I did’ and cannot believe what is being done to children now and the school safeguarding breaches.
They should just take the difficult decision to close a school now. The Government has just clamped down on dependent visas so it is like that fewer children will be arriving in the city in the future.
You mean beyond the the two they’ve already closed? The backlash from that has been pretty substantial. Forecasting is really difficult to doz especially with an election year coming up.
Better to get the pain over so the schools can rebuild and move on. Otherwise we have the situation all schools are underfunded which will cause an impact on especially disadvantaged kids that don’t get the resources they need to reach their potential. There is no money so the situation is unlikely to reverse unless Labour make substantial cuts to public services elsewhere which is unlikely.
The Councilor’s must investigate the scandal at Vardean School.
Public tax payers money was wasted, while pupils played truant, after been groomed by adults. They took unauthorized absence to go on demos.
Have the parents been fined ?
Have Police investigated the adults who conspired in this?
Has the Headmistresses failures to maintain discipline & ensure public money is not wasted been reviewed?
Have you reported your allegations to the police? It’s all very well posting on here, but if accurrate, you have a duty to report this.
Of course they haven’t, it’s all made up tin-foil-hat BS where the kids found a political voice that the commenter doesn’t like so the commenter makes up some rubbish about grooming.
Much easier to post conspiracy theories anonymously in a comments section of an online paper, than it is to actually back those up with facts.
Labour promised in their manifesto not to close any schools. You can’t trust new new Labour
The comments section here is looking more and more like the Argus rejects. Can we petition the Argus to scrap their digital fees so their commenters can return back to their natural home?
On topic, it’s fairly clear that there is a snowball effect: schools get funded based on filled places; school rolls are reducing across Sussex; therefore funding which is already increasing at less than inflation anyway is being cut further; the Council takes the difficult decision to close and consolidate schools, which is dragged out by objecting petitions adding to the delays and costs.
Central government has slashed services and funding for schools to the bone since 2010. Any of us that know teachers and administrators know that they are finding it tough balancing the books, and the Council can’t support further with the little that it has. The hope is that a change soon in central government might allow a little more funding to be released for education services, but by then it will be too little too late for many schools across the country.
I respect that position, it’s a really difficult one to argue against. I’d like to on a moral standpoint, I’m a strong advocate for investing in children. I’m exploring some options for working with the third sector to do some synergetic projects to help protect the school and community assets. See how much it works!
The real reason schools are losing pupils is all the parents taking them out of school to home ed them, surely?
Parents are rapdily losing faith in schools being fit and proper places for their children and who can blame them?
I am not sure about home schooling but they are without doubt moving them to areas with better schools such as Haywards Heath or Worthing. In Brighton there are state schools which have kids that are two years behind where they should be on reading and writing. In these schools none of the kids are meeting the minimal level and yet the teachers instead of being fired are on high salary payscales. The LA needs to introduce proper performance management for pay rises in line with teacher performance judged by SATs results. This will improve the standards of underperforming schools and also stop schools spending money on high salaries for poorly performing teachers which will help them balance their budgets. The schools should also concentrate on teaching the basics and not there are 100 genders or you can change gender at the drop of a hat which has been found by the Cass report to be very damaging to children. The issue with some Brighton schools is there is too much emphasis on contentious contested topics and not enough on teaching kids to have the basic skills so they can thrive in the workplace when they leave school.
Which Brighton schools have “too much” emphasis on contentious contested topics? Name them.
Which contested topics? Name them.
What do you mean by “too much”? Provide your workings in terms of hours spent on “contentious contested topics” versus the standard state curriculum. I suspect that your definition of “too much” is even mentioning it once, but let’s see your evidence anyway.
Ridiculous comment !
Let’s see your evidence & workings.
I’m not the one providing unsubstantiated opinions. You and other posters are making the accusations, back them up with facts.
This just goes to show how difficult balancing the schools budget is in this current financial climate. The dedicated schools grant is totally dependent on filling sctual school places, (with extra funds for those with EHCP’s). But pressure from inflation has really squeezed schools the past year, (about 92% of their budget goes on staffing so if fuel bills rocket it is very, very tough to pay). To add to this Brighton and Hove is showing an ongoing and continual decline in pupil numbers – much as the two schools closing is unpopular it will eventually be a necessity, (as a rough rule of thumb any school below 200 pupils becomes very difficult to make work financially).