Education system in Northern Ireland will be bankrupt very soon, principal warns

Robin McLoughlin, headmaster of Banbridge Academy, giving evidence to the Education Committee at Stormont. He said the education system in Northern Ireland 'will be bankrupt very, very soon'

Robin McLoughlin, headmaster of Banbridge Academy, told the Education Committee at Stormont that he did not believe there was a full understanding in the Executive of how quickly schools would run out of money.

Members also heard from Education Minister Paul Givan who said that his department is currently on course for a £215 million overspend.

The committee was receiving a briefing from the Independent Review of Education panel.

The panel’s wide-ranging review into Northern Ireland’s education system last year reported that the schools in the region are seriously underfunded.

Outlining funding pressures in education, Mr McLoughlin told the committee: “Money is very tight in the Executive budget.

“I’m not convinced there’s a full understanding of how quickly we are going to run out of money in education.

“As we sit here today the education system, in my view, will be bankrupt very, very soon.

“I appreciate that the Executive have very difficult decisions to be made by other governmental departments, understandably health and the acute nature of health.

“At this moment in time, most schools, we are predicting on the basis of their initial opening budget, which will change when the June monitoring round money comes, and it will need to come, most schools are predicting roughly a 10% deficit at the end of this year, a 20% deficit at the end of the following year and a 30% deficit at the end of the third year.

“That is completely unrecoverable.”

He added: “Schooling and the education of our country, unless there is a change in the quantum of monies… we can’t balance our books.

“There needs to be an understanding that that quantum of money is going to have to be put into the education budget and it needs to come urgently.

“We are heading towards a precipice.”

The Stormont Assembly agreed its budget last month, although Finance Minister Caoimhe Archibald warned that no department had received the funding that ministers asked for.

Education received £2.87 billion in the budget, an increase of 11.5% from the previous financial year.

Former principal Marie Lindsay told the committee that education was facing a funding crisis.

She said: “All schools are facing astronomical deficits over the three-year plan.

“This is a crisis, this needs addressed.”

Independent Review of Education panel member Sir Gerry Loughran, a former head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, added: “In my own school I’ve never had a deficit.

“But this year coming, starting September, our prediction is a massive deficit.”

Giving evidence to the committee later, Mr Givan said he had commissioned an exercise on what a 10% reduction in funding would mean for the education sector.

He said: “I am putting forward a significant bid as part of the June monitoring round. That is why we haven’t finalised the budget allocations within the department and its arms-length bodies.

“I need to make the case and I will to colleagues in the Executive as to why education needs to receive funding.

“We are on a projected overspend of £215 million.

“The impact on that in the education sector is, to say the least, significant and that hasn’t been crystallised yet as to the reality of what that means but it will after the conclusion of the June monitoring round and I will know what funding is available to the department.”