North East schools voice mounting pressure ahead of the Autumn Budget
As the Autumn Budget approaches, schools across the North East are sounding the alarm louder than ever: the education system is at breaking point.
Schools North East has collated a series of powerful case studies from our education leaders, capturing the real pressures they are facing, financial struggles, lack of support and increasing need to support their wider communities.
As one leader put it, many schools are now “operating at or beyond capacity,” holding together a system that is struggling to meet the needs of the children it serves.
Why these case studies matter
These testimonies were gathered to offer policymakers something raw figures can’t provide: the voices and day-to-day realities of school leaders navigating unprecedented strain.
Despite representing a wide variety of settings (special and mainstream, primary and secondary, maintained and trust-led), each of these stories points to the same issues.
Need is rising.
Services are retreating.
Budgets no longer stretch but are breaking
Staff are exhausted.
The Autumn Budget is a critical moment for schools, offering a chance to ease the pressures that are now shaping daily decisions in classrooms and communities. In five days’ time, we’ll see whether the Chancellor has chosen to address the realities facing children, families, and school leaders, or whether the sector will be left to manage the same challenges with even fewer resources.
Chris Zarraga, Director of Schools North East, stressed the urgency: “The Autumn Budget represents a critical turning point for education in our region. Without urgent intervention, school leaders will be forced into decisions none of them want to make: cutting essential provision, reducing specialist support, or scaling back the services that families rely on every day.
“These case studies make one thing painfully clear: without additional investment, the cuts that follow will fall hardest on the children who already face the steepest challenges. We are asking the Government to recognise the scale of this crisis and act now, before the damage becomes irreversible.”
A system buckling under SEND pressure
One of the most striking issues identified in our case studies comes from a mixed multi-academy trust whose specialist schools now sit at the centre of their local SEND system. Over the past decade, demand has doubled. Their specialist sites are full, yet placements continue to be named because local authorities have nowhere else to turn; some independent providers no longer accept the highest-need pupils, and regional capacity is exhausted.
This shortage is forcing inappropriate placements, with pupils arriving whose needs the schools simply cannot safely meet. Class sizes have increased by up to 50%, breakout spaces have been lost, and the complexity of need has reached levels staff describe as “overwhelming.” Injuries to staff are increasing, and despite expanded training and wellbeing support, recruitment and retention remain incredibly challenging.
The safety net that should surround specialist provision—health, social care, therapeutic services—has eroded so significantly that schools are left carrying responsibilities they were never designed for.
Funding pressures deepen the crisis
Alongside these operational challenges, the financial picture is deteriorating rapidly. Specialist place funding has been frozen for more than ten years while costs continue to rise. Safety Valve agreements are pushing pupils into the lowest possible top-up bands, regardless of need, creating an impossible gap between the resources required and the funding received.
Leaders report a growing pattern in which small, early interventions that could stabilise a placement are refused…only for the situation to escalate into costly breakdowns.
One example shared was a child whose subsequent independent placement will cost the local authority over £2 million over the student’s remaining compulsory school age. Meanwhile, mainstream schools have pupils on roll whose EHCPs name specialist settings, but with no places available, they are forced to create makeshift provision with neither the staffing ratios nor the training to do so safely.
A critical moment for the region’s children
With multi-agency services stretched beyond capacity and capital projects (such as much-needed special free schools) delayed after the 2024 election, school leaders are clear that the system is now at a tipping point. Budgets are exhausted. Staff are overstretched. And the children with the most complex needs are being let down by a structure that cannot keep up.
The message from the North East is urgent and unmistakable: without meaningful investment in the Autumn Budget, schools will be forced into further cuts that will hit vulnerable pupils hardest. Our network of remarkable school leaders has done everything possible to hold the system together. Now it’s time for policymakers to step up and do the same.
For every child, for every school, for the future of our region.