Jess Phillips is planning to leave her 10-year-old son in Downing Street for an afternoon, after his school announced it was closing early on Fridays because it can no longer afford to stay open for a full week.
The Labour MP’s son Danny’s school is one of around 30 which have announced the same cost-cutting measure in the face of budget struggles.
Recent analysis by Education Policy Institute found half of all secondary academies and 60% of maintained secondary schools – those managed by local authorities – are spending more than they are receiving.
The Birmingham Labour MP has launched a crowdfunding campaign with the Save our Schools group to fund the protest, and is asking schools and other parents to support “a huge campaign day”.
Phillips and others plan to “leave” their children at the Department for Education (DfE), the Treasury and Downing Street at 1pm, the time when many schools have said they will have to shut on a Friday.
She told HuffPost UK: “As soon as I received the message from my son’s school, I reacted as any parent would in thinking that the government has a responsibility to my child and the children my son goes to school with.
“I think they need to be shown that it’s their responsibility with direct action of leaving the children in their care when they are meant to be caring for them. That was my immediate reaction.”
The campaign, which is trending on crowdfunding website GoFundMe, has raised more than £5,000 since launching on Monday night.
The money raised through the campaign will be used to bus pupils, parents and teachers to Westminster for the day.
Since its launch, Phillips said she has received “hundreds of messages from all round the country” from schools having to make the same decision, with some even considering shortening every school day, not just Friday.
The MP said she attended a meeting at her son’s school during which teachers went through the finances to show how cutting school hours was the only way to stay afloat. They also plan to cut resources for children with special educational needs, of which the school has a high percentage.
“They showed all the cutbacks they have already made and how the school gets less than many of the other local schools, who are also struggling. They have cut back to the bone and they are left with no other option than to do this,” she said.
The extra financial pressure came after the government changed the spending formula, which put the school £200,000 out of pocket.
“No-one is saying schools in rural areas shouldn’t have been given more money, but it shouldn’t have been at the cost of schools in poorer areas, but that’s what the government did,” Phillips said.
There are already two schools in her constituency planning the measures, and in total the politician said she had heard from 15 schools in Birmingham in the same boat.
She has also heard from schools or parents in Cheshire, London, Leeds and Stockport, among others.
One school – Charters School in Windsor – planning to start half days on Friday from September sits just miles away from the border of Theresa May’s constituency, and Phillips is sure some of the children who go there must be the PM’s constituents.
“This is not just my son’s school who can’t manage its budget, this is a case of the government not being able to run its schools,” she said.
“There aren’t any other members of parliament standing up and saying this is happening, and there certainly won’t be from the government benches because their children probably already do shorter hours because private schools do.”
Despite the lack of support in parliament, the campaign has gained traction among teachers and parents, with hundreds of messages of support pouring in on GoFundMe and on social media.
Phillips said: “The reason for this is because every single parent with a child in a state primary or state secondary school, and certainly every single parent with special educational needs has been receiving, for years now, letters home from their schools about what they can and can’t afford anymore.”
This is about the “nuts and bolts of people’s lives,” she added.
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We know schools face budgeting challenges schools and are being asked to do more. However, Birmingham receives per pupil funding significantly above the national average: in 2019-20, an average of £5,080 per pupil, well above the national average of £4,689. So we are also clear that schools in Birmingham should have no need to move to a shortened week for financial reasons.
“Flexibility over the length of the school week is not new, schools have long had the ability to structure the school week as they wish and we trust that headteachers will do this in a sensible manner.”