The well-being and education of our pupils in schools across Wales should be at the forefront of our minds in this Assembly. Now, schools in Wales have faced a challenging financial situation for a number of years, and have already made great savings. The leaders and the staff in schools have done their best and made the best of a very difficult situation to safeguard the education and well-being of pupils, but the situation has reached a point where the effect on the profession and on the pupils is so damaging that we have to consider the situation as one of a crisis.

The situation does stem from the financial settlements that local authorities have received from the Welsh Government, which, in turn, arises from the settlement from the Westminster Government. We know that, but the Welsh Government does need to accept responsibility for trying to tackle the crisis facing the field of education today.

In a letter to the Plaid Cymru shadow Cabinet Secretary for Education, the Cabinet Secretary says that it’s local authorities that are responsible for school funding, and that the Welsh Government expects local authorities to ensure that sufficient provision is available for the needs of every learner. In order to ensure that, of course, we also need to ensure that the councils receive sufficient funding. In a report by Wales Public Services 2025, the budgets of councils were considered between 2009-10 and 2016-17. Over this period, there was an increase of 48 per cent on expenditure on health services, and a commitment by the Welsh Government to safeguard funding for schools and social care. In the field of education, there was a specific commitment to increase expenditure on schools over 1 per cent above the change in the Welsh block grant, a block that was shrinking.

There was no commitment to safeguard funding for councils, and by 2016-17 grants from the Welsh Government had decreased 17.1 per cent, a decrease of almost a third of all the expenditure on schools by councils in Wales. Although councils have used council tax and other measures to make up for this in part, there was still £529 million less funding in 2016-17 as compared to 2009-10. This is almost the same as the total funding spent by councils in Wales on social services for older people. As a result, local government expenditure across Wales decreased almost £223 per head, and, despite the efforts of councils in Wales to avoid salami-slicing and to safeguard schools and care, expenditure on school budgets decreased 4.4 per cent, or £254 per head. Funding reserves were used in schools and the reserved funds of schools decreased 41.3 per cent in the period that we’re talking about. This is a clear sign of the financial crisis that’s facing our schools.

According to the same report, the previous Government’s commitment to safeguard budgets for schools made some difference, but there is no such commitment in place from this current Government, and so it’s understandable that unions, the education workforce, parents and pupils are extremely concerned about their schools.

In the short term, the Welsh Government and local authorities need to take steps to ensure that the information that is available to schools is as comprehensive and transparent as possible, that the information is complete, and they need to receive that information as early as possible so that schools know what the budget is going to be. UCAC, for example, has called for the possibility of setting budgets every three years to be considered, and some local authorities are able to plan ahead on that basis.

The Welsh Government also needs to undertake a full review of the financial situation of schools in Wales, along with stakeholders, as a first step towards trying to solve the financial crisis in our schools.