How on earth can we pay our bills? That is a question being asked with increasing urgency, not just by people worrying about whether they can afford to heat their homes or by those who run small businesses, but by headteachers wondering how to make their school budgets add up. Soaring energy bills are only one of the pressures they face. Teachers pay is going up with no increase in school budgets to pay for it. So too are other costs. All this comes as schools are dealing with the costs of helping a generation of children catch up with the schooling they lost during the pandemic.

Today’s Nick Robinson speaks to Nick Hudson, the Chief Executive of Ormiston Academies Trust and Rachael Warwick the Executive Headteacher of the Ridgeway Education Trust in Oxfordshire. He was also joined by Robert Halfon, the Conservative MP and Chair of the Education Select Committee. (IMAGE CREDIT: REUTERS/Andrew Couldridge)