Primary school head teachers and governors have asked council bosses why so many schools have been allowed to overspend their budgets for years at a time.
This year 33 out of 61 schools in Brighton and Hove schools are finishing the year with deficit budgets, an increase of seven from the previous year.
A report to the Brighton and Hove Schools Forum on Monday (1 July) said that school balances at the year-end came to £281,000, with some schools having underspent their budget.
This is a drop of £4.259 million compared with 2022-23.
The biggest overspends came in the primary sector which was £1.1 million in the red for 2023-24 and carried forward a £2.3 million deficit, with 26 out of 48 schools operating with deficit balances.
An appendix to the report, which was not publicly available, said that one primary school overspent for nine years running. In 2023-24, it was £118,000 in the red.
Another school which overspent for eight years in a row went £164,000 over budget. The biggest overspend was £522,000, for a school with a £1.9 million budget. That school was in the red for a third successive year.
The issues affecting school budgets were given as falling pupil numbers, the rising cost of living, local policy decisions on the National Living Wage and the effects of unfunded national pay increases.
But Rachel Kershaw, head teacher of St Margaret’s (Church of England) Primary School, in Rottingdean, said that schools with fewer pupils were not necessarily the schools in the red.
She said that eight of the schools in deficit were full, with few pupils who had special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), and budgets of £3 million to £4 million a year.
Mrs Kershaw said: “I accept there’s going to be staffing issues and massive premises issues.
“Primary heads have done trends analysis. 73 per cent of schools that are three-form entry or larger are in deficit but only 64 per cent of one-form entry are.”
The council’s assistant director for families, children and learning, Jo Lyons, said that the council had not analysed the trends but had scrutinised and challenged the deficits.
Robert Hardy, who chairs the Schools Forum, said that some schools had “far exceeded” the three-year time limit for recovering from an overspent budget.
Mr Hardy, who also chairs the board of governors at Hill Park School, Portslade, said: “To borrow from a different 12-step programme, the first step is acknowledging and understanding the scale of the problem.
“This is very much siloed by school – and I understand entirely why – but it makes it much harder for collective decisions to be made on a collective understanding.
If the council hadn’t mismanaged so many other things in Brighton financially it would be able to support the children and schools in the city rather than wasting money on things that won’t improve children’s lives or prospects. Invest in the future of the city which isn’t shiny donuts, pointless roundabouts, endless bus lanes or overgrown planting.
If you don’t hurry up and do so the children in schools in Brighton and Hove will be writing in blood soon as they won’t be able to afford pens and pencils.