King James’s School in Knaresborough is spending an extra £7,000 a week tackling covid, Parliament was told yesterday.
Covid has imposed additional costs on all schools, such as paying for supply teachers to cover teachers who are isolating.
But the scale of the problem at one local school was laid bare during a Commons education debate.
Andrew Jones, the Conservative MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough, asked if the government would take into account variable infection rates when planning education budgets for tomorrow’s Spending Review.
Mr Jones said:
“The highest levels of infection lead to the highest levels of people having to isolate, including teachers, so there are increased budgetary costs from having to backfill teaching staff.
“King James’s School in Knaresborough, a secondary school in my constituency, briefed me that this is running at £7,000 a week, so schools are facing a significant challenge.”
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Paul McIntosh, acting headteacher of King James’s School, urged ministers to help. He told the Stray Ferret:
“In the present climate, it is unsustainable to keep spending the extra money on resources like additional cleaning and supply teachers in order simply to maintain the school functioning in a relatively normal capacity.
“We would greatly appreciate the government giving serious consideration to providing schools with additional funding in order to support us through these difficult winter months.”
Gillian Keegan, the skills minister, told the Commons debate the government had provided £75,000 additional funding for “unavoidable costs that could not be met from their existing budgets”.
She added:
“There will be a further opportunity later in the year for schools to claim for eligible costs that fell between March and July.”
