'Schools are completely broke, children's safety is on the line'

Nine in 10 schools are expected to run out of money by next September, with those in London worst hit so is the future of education at risk?

- Katie Strick reports

RICHARD Slade - headteacher at Plumcroft primary school in Greenwich - is listing some of the R heartbreaking decisions he's had to make as a result of real terms school budget cuts: reducing the quantity and quality of school trips; not being able to replace classroom iPads when they break; buildings and playground equipment falling into disrepair; and - most tragically yet - not being able to replace a senior teacher who passed away with cancer because the alternative would be to let vulnerable children go unsupported.

The father-of-four is exhausted. He started the job in 2010, and while money has never been plentiful in education he at least had sufficient funding back then to supplement the curriculum with so-called "extras" like visits from musicians, additional tutoring and anti-obesity projects. Now he's reached the point where there simply isn't enough money to deliver the basics of education, and it's risking safety.

"Schools like mine are on a knife-edge," Slade, 57, says. His school has an annual government-funded budget of around £6 million, but despite everything he and his colleagues have done to reduce costs, from not fixing the leaking roof to running classes of more than 30 students, they'll still have a deficit of at least £154,000 this financial year. Not only does this mean "hope, possibility, joy and opportunity" are being wiped out of the curriculum, but without urgent Government action the school might have to close altogether.

"If it was purely a business that had to break even, we'd have shut it years ago... The only reason we keep it going is because it's children at the heart of it," says Slade. To illustrate how close he is to breaking point, he says is prepared to go on strike for the first time in his 20-year career and has already brought his retirement forward by a decade, to the age of 60 rather than 70.