Headteachers tell of the challenges brought by 10 years of austerity – and their hopes and fears for the new year

Sammy will wake up on Christmas morning with little hope of a visit from Santa. He didn’t get a present last Christmas and it is unlikely he will get one this year, because his mother struggles just to put food on the table. But it is not all gloom for the lively eight-year-old. Next Monday, 23 December, his school will reopen and the teachers and support staff will return, unpaid, to organise a huge “Christmas Eve Eve” party for the 350 pupils and their families. Kitchen staff will serve 800 Christmas dinners and each child will see Santa and get to unwrap a present bought by the school with money donated by businesses.

“We’re having unicorns and that’s what I’m looking forward to, as well as Santa and the dancing,” he says.

Sammy is a pupil at Parklands primary school in Leeds, which serves one of the biggest council estates in England, an area in the top 1% in England for deprivation. Only a third of working-age adults have jobs and three-quarters of pupils qualify for the pupil premium, the extra money given to schools to support the poorest children.

Chris Dyson, its headteacher, says Christmas can be a confusing time for some children. “They see everyone making Santa lists and yet they don’t get anything they asked for,” he says. “We have children here who don’t get a present at Christmas or on their birthdays. When I came here five years ago I found very few children had been to see Santa. It broke my heart. I wanted to give them a dream, a hope, and show how invested I am in them, even in holiday times.”

Headteachers say that supporting families living in long-term poverty and finding help for children with mental health and welfare issues are among the biggest challenges they will face in 2020. Other challenges are the urgent need to improve the provision for children with disabilities and special educational needs, teacher shortages, tackling poor classroom discipline, reducing exclusions, and the need to reform the unfair funding system that allocates between 50% and 70% more “per pupil funding” to some parts of the country than others.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Chris Dyson and Parklands children preparing for Christmas. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

Over in Blackpool, Stephen Tierney, executive director of a small multi-academy trust consisting of St Mary’s, a Catholic secondary school, and two primary schools, Christ the King and St Cuthbert’s, says schools have become “the fourth emergency service” for families in crisis – because there is nothing else. The trust’s primary schools will open for five days during the Christmas break to provide shelter, food and warmth for vulnerable pupils. This week they are giving out hampers, funded by a charity appeal.

“A decade ago schools wouldn’t have had to do it, but we have had 10 years of austerity. There are consequences for those at the bottom who are bearing the brunt,” he says.

“It’s heartbreaking for some of our families. Children are going back to homes with no carpets, no heating, no food in the fridge, the place is cold, it is not in great repair, and Christmas will be about surviving. We were thinking of providing the ingredients for a Christmas lunch – but then some homes won’t have enough money for fuel to cook it and some don’t even have an oven.

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“Heads in Blackpool will tell you stories of family after family who make it clear there is no money for Christmas presents this year and there were no presents last year,” he says. “It is hard to comprehend the hopelessness these parents feel. That is where schools come in. Should we have to? No, but if we don’t, then who will?”

Tierney’s staff are volunteering to come in without pay, and local organisations are providing food at no cost. Unless children get help, “what will they eat this Christmas?” he asks.

“The boxes will be going out and they are not what you would expect in a Christmas hamper – they will have staples such as pasta and rice and tinned tomatoes, because Christmas is survival for these families, not a bonus.”

Back in Leeds, the most expensive gifts are matched to those most in need. The reality of survival on the Seacroft estate kicks in, however. “The last three bikes we gave away ended up on eBay within hours,” says Dyson sadly.

The headteachers are not exaggerating. Official statistics from the Department for Work and Pensions for 2017-18 show an increase to nearly one in eight – 12% – of children living in low-income homes and suffering severe material deprivation. The finding is based on a survey of whether households can afford things such as a warm winter coat, celebrations on special occasions, and separate bedrooms for children of different genders over the age of 10.

Families living in poverty are more likely to suffer breakdown, ill health and mental health issues, but headteachers in more affluent areas of the country say they, too, are having to provide welfare services that were once supplied by local authorities and the health service.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Executive head Stephen Tierney with Blackpool pupils. His trust’s primaries will open for five days over the Christmas break: ‘If schools don’t, who will?’ Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

Mark Anstiss, headteacher of Felpham Community College, near Bognor Regis, in West Sussex, says teachers are coping with an increase in the number of children with mental health issues – on stretched budgets that, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, have gone down by 8% in real terms since 2010.

“We are a typical comprehensive school in terms of socio-economic profile and ability intake and we are seeing a big increase in challenging behaviour and students with emotional health issues coming up from primary school,” he says.

“It’s partly to do with changes in society but also because of the loss of help and support from local authorities. We are coping with challenges around anxiety about school, as the curriculum has become more academic, plus pressures from home. That manifests in a higher level of eating disorders and self-harm.”

Fairer funding is top of Antiss’s Santa wishlist, as he struggles to afford enough specialist teachers and is having to cut down on teaching assistant numbers. Schools in West Sussex are the 10th-worst funded of England’s 152 local education authorities, because of a per-pupil funding formula that awards pupils more in some authorities than in others.

Antiss points out that a similarly sized school in Hackney, east London, gets 70% more for each pupil than his school does. That is more than £3m a year lost to the education of his students in West Sussex.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest West Sussex secondary head Mark Anstiss has a long wishlist for next year.

Phillip Potter, head of Oak Grove college, a special school for 11- to 19-year-olds in Worthing, West Sussex, says funding to provide higher salaries for teaching assistants, the “unsung heroes” of special education, is at the top of his letter to Santa.

He says he is struggling to buy essential mobility equipment for his high-needs students. “My dream for 2020 is that the high-needs block will be funded properly and there will be an integrated health, social care and education system to deliver joined-up services for our most vulnerable youngsters, without having to have arguments about who will pay and take things to what feels like 400 panels to get agreement,” he says.

While headteachers all have a long list for Santa, they are likely to agree on one thing. “Every teacher’s dream is that politicians keep out of education,” says Potter. “We don’t tell doctors how to do heart surgery, so let 2020 be the year that politicians stop telling us how to teach and give us the resources.”

Back at Dyson’s school in Leeds, money is not the problem, however. “I raised £350,000 last year from businesses and have just secured £150,000 to open the school at February half term, and in the Easter and summer holidays,” he says.

Through the extra funds he has been able to employ more teaching assistants to give one-to-one support to the most vulnerable students, reduce class sizes and buy in support from specialists for conditions such as dyslexia.

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He has concerns about what is happening in education generally, however, particularly over discipline and the number of children other schools are excluding. When he arrived at Parklands, more than 150 children a year were being excluded; now it is down to one – and that is one too many for Dyson.

“I’ve started to take children excluded from other schools to give them a chance,” he says. “I’ve built this school on love. I’ve banned teachers shouting at children, I’ve got rid of the dreaded padded isolation cell, played music and given children respect.”

He is concerned about the current “warm-strict” approach to discipline coming from the Department for Education and its behaviour tsar, Tom Bennett, who has defended a “zero-tolerance” approach to behaviour and the creation of centralised detention systems and internal inclusion units.

“That way of thinking is that the only way to sort out discipline is to exclude them, to put them in isolation, ban them and put them in boot camps. No! You can do it another way,” Dyson says. “‘Warm-strict’ is having lots of rules but trying to put a warm spin on it by saying that as long as your discipline is strong and tough, you can afford to smile at children.”

Dyson, a father of three, says he is not afraid to hug children. “We are a huggy school; if children are upset we give them a hug.”

The school is a happy place where children are allowed to wear trainers and joggers, and are not told how to wear their hair. Travis, a pupil excluded from another primary school for violence, appears now to be a model student. “Don’t run in the corridor because you might knock over someone who is disabled,” he warns some younger students. “Open the door for visitors,” he tells a girl who pushes past. He then rushes off to comfort a boy in his class who has suddenly broken down in tears in the corridor.

“At my other school I used to get into fights and they put me in isolation,” he says. “It was come into school, go into isolation, come into school, go into isolation, come into school, go into isolation. Every day. When I came here, Mr Dyson spent a lot of money on me – £150 I think – to get me help for dyslexia three times a week and I really like it here. It’s magic.”

Children’s names have been changed