When Labour won the 2024 general election, many of my fellow teachers were delighted. After fourteen years of one Conservative or another occupying Downing Street, they felt that finally ‘the right people’ were in power.
Ten months later, their excitement has turned to despair. Promise after promise has evaporated. The jubilant attitude in staff rooms around Britain has been replaced by a kind of exhausted bewilderment as the effects of the government’s economic illiteracy start to bite.
Keir Starmer is quickly discovering that governing is not the same as protesting
Keir Starmer is quickly discovering that governing is not the same as protesting. Making quick pay deals may have appeased the unions, but it did huge damage to public finances, even before the capital and labour flight caused by the Government’s tax policies.
Having run out of other people’s money so soon, Labour has speedily closed down maths and computing hubs in state schools as well as Latin excellence programmes. Its sights are now on level 7 apprenticeships. Those same politicians my teaching colleagues assumed would open new doors to disadvantaged children are closing existing openings and bolting them shut.
The government is also squeezing school budgets. Schools are expected to fund pay rises amid a real-term cut in funding. This is not the first time a teacher pay increase has been promised without providing adequate funding, but the shortfall is cavernous. It is happening alongside a simultaneous increase in national insurance contributions for employers, dealing a double whammy to the payroll.
As a result, heads are having to let staff go. Labour promised to hire 6,500 new teachers over this Parliament, yet we now face the ugly irony of maths teachers being made redundant because Labour’s Treasury team cannot do their sums. As Sir Dan Moynihan of Harris Federation said recently, the situation is ‘unprecedented’. In another twist of irony, those teaching unions that worked hard to help Labour get into power are now watching their most experienced members face the axe because their longevity in the job makes them more expensive than novice teachers.
When teaching economics to sixth-form students, there are few more enjoyable lightbulb moments to experience in the classroom than when learners grasp the Laffer curve. They finally understand why we can’t just tax rich people ‘until the pips squeak’.
Unfortunately, with record numbers of millionaires and billionaires leaving the country, this is a moment of epiphany that leading members of the Government clearly failed to enjoy themselves. We have moved from a fictional £22 billion black hole dismissed by the Office for Budget Responsibility to an actual, predicted £63 billion crater of the Treasury’s making. Schools are now paying the price.
As costs spiral, my Labour-supporting friends’ social media have gone quiet. This Government badly needs its lightbulb moment – the kind that flickers into life in a Year 12 classroom when students understand the Laffer curve. Until then, the government is trapped in the half-dream state of opposition, convinced that consequences are for other people.
Anthony Boutall is a teacher. He is writing in a personal capacity.
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