The biased BBC serves up some fake news on education spending as head teachers take a day off

Of course Britain’s head teachers (700 of whom earn more than £100,000 a year) could have taken the day off to go on a march against education “cuts” in London during their 13 weeks annual leave. They did not but are marching today as the state funded propagator of fake news, the BBC reported with pleasure. At least that will mean fewer head teachers getting six year olds to write same sex love letters to each other.

The BBC admitted that, as the Government stated, actual spending on schools had increased last year to its highest ever but insisted that it real terms it had been cut by 8%. Really, is inflation running at 10%? Why did no-one tell us this. For that is what a real term adjustment actually means.

But not if you are a head teacher or the BBC. Its real term adjustments are for increased number of pupils and higher costs.  Yes pupil numbers are marginally up but that does not feed through directly into costs. A 1% or 2% increase in pupils does not mean you need 1$ or 2% more teachers or classrooms or school playing fields. There is an inbuilt economy of scale.

And of course costs may have gone up. Head Teacher pay, for instance, went up. But you do not “real term adjust” how much the Government gives just because some Guardian reading fat cats award themselves even bigger cream allowances.

There may or may not be an issue with education funding but serving up bogus data and having Pravda report it as fact is not going to help anyone have an informed debate about it.