The chair of Victoria College’s governing body has warned that schools are being left to absorb major cost rises triggered by government contracts and pay decisions they cannot opt out of – adding to what she described as “underfunding across the board” in education.
Susana Rowles, chair of the board of governors at Victoria College, which suffered a budget shortfall of nearly £130,000 last year, wrote to parents last week after it emerged that the majority of the Island’s schools ended 2024 in the red.
While Education Minister Rob Ward pointed towards the sharp increase in pupils with special educational needs – from just over 200 in 2017 to more than 500 today – when grilled over the worsening deficits in the States Assembly this week, Ms Rowles instead pointed to pressures from staffing and operational costs.
“Our fixed running costs are largely outside of our control,” Ms Rowles said.
“Some of our fixed running costs, such as cleaning and grounds contracts, are driven by central contracts negotiated by GoJ, and the proportion of funding we receive from GoJ to part-fund these contracts, has not increased in line with the negotiated rates… This has a greater impact on the colleges where the historic buildings are less efficient and more costly to run than the more modern facilities in other Government schools.”
She also revealed that 85% of the school’s costs were staffing costs, noting that these were “highly susceptible to GoJ pay agreements”.
But staffing cuts are not the answer to resolving the funding issues, she said.
This would “invariably have an impact on frontline provision” and potentially lead to “cuts in the diversity of curriculum that is available at our schools or in the supporting services we provide”.
In any case, large-scale savings in this area “cannot be seriously contemplated in the timescales available to us as any changes would take months, or even years, to impact the bottom line,” she said.
The physical constraints of an historic site also make economies of scale impossible, according to Ms Rowles.
“Even if we wanted (which we do not) we would not be able to accommodate large class sizes which could bring with them some economies of scale.”
Instead, the school had “worked hard to reduce any non-essential expenditure, such as minor repairs” – but “these cuts cannot be sustained”, Ms Rowles warned.
Fee-paying schools Beaulieu and De La Salle do not have the same problem, as, despite both being in receipt of government grants, they are “wholly autonomous” and can “set their own staff salary scales, work separately to GoJ central policies, [and] negotiate their own utility contracts”.
“They can make their own building development decisions, leverage their assets, contact loans and even retain earnings from one year to the next, all of which we cannot.”
Amid these challenges, she claimed the Government had failed to honour the agreed level of funding of 47% of the cost of educating a pupil at a States-run school – a formula agreed by the States Assembly in 2017.
“In summary, it seems clear… that there is underfunding across the board in Education. We would like to see all schools funded adequately.
“While some people may be against the principle of the Government funding the fee-paying sector, Victoria College is a GoJ state school and, as such, and while that relationship remains in place, the pupils at our school have a right to fair funding.”
