Cost of living: Schools heading for financial catastrophe which could cost jobs as costs soar, warn Halifax heads

Heads across Calderdale and beyond are returning to school after the summer break to the prospect of astronomical rises in energy prices, no extra Government cash to pay for a rise in teacher salaries and increasing inflation rates.

Some schools are seeing energy costs of three times what they were this time last year.

Headteacher at The Halifax Academy Matt Perry said: "The Government needs to do something. Schools up and down the country are going to go bankrupt.

"There's a perfect storm where there are three competing pressures which have been known about but nobody has planned for.

"There are the fuel prices, there's the unfunded teacher pay rises - which they absolutely deserve but is £20,000 we hadn't budgeted for – and there's inflation on top of that.”

He said school staff worked incredibly hard through the pandemic to keep educating children, and have since been trying to make up for the experiences and opportunities they missed during all the lockdowns – but they will struggle in the face of these rising costs.

He said no school wants to shut and return to remote learning, and they would not want to put the cost of warming houses back on families by sending children home.

But schools are big buildings to heat, and he warned this winter could see schools facing stark choices about which lights to put on and whether to ask pupils to wear coats inside.

Mungo Sheppard, Headteacher at Ash Green Primary School in Mixenden, said: “Some schools are going to be crippled.

“Our budgets were already looking pretty bleak but we’re going to have to reassess because everyone is going to be looking at minus sheets.

"If nothing is forthcoming from the Government, we need to balance the books so we’ll be looking at raising money elsewhere.”

He warned cost-saving could even mean losing staff.

"All solutions will be to the detriment of children,” he said.

Both heads say their schools already work to support their pupils families and surrounding communities, and they will do what they can to increase that.