The head of St Peter’s School in Budleigh Salterton has lambasted the Government over education funding and its handling of the teachers’ pay dispute.

Steve Hitchcock has accused the Department for Education of ‘refusing to confront reality’, and says the effect of the teachers’ strikes on children’s education is ‘minimal’ compared with the long-term underfunding of schools.

Mr Hitchcock – who has just launched a crowdfunder to support his school - made his views known in a furious letter to the education minister Gillian Keegan. It was in response to an email she sent to schools criticising the National Education Union for refusing to pause its strike action for talks on pay and conditions.

Mr Hitchcock’s letter says there is no trust between the Department for Education and headteachers, and the funding system does not reflect the changing role of schools in society or the recruitment crisis in the teaching profession.

He argues that schools are now providing parents and children with support they cannot get anywhere else, and describes the claim that school funding is at its highest level ever as ‘patronising’. He says: “A decade of austerity and a pandemic has caused a significant erosion of all elements of schools. My role as a headteacher is more as a fundraiser and community worker than an educator.”

In his letter Mr Hitchcock proposes a national consultation on the role of schools and education. He says: “Parents no longer have access to support services, more children are in poverty, parents are expected to be in work more, and life growing up (particularly around safeguarding and the online world) is way more complex than in the past. Schools need to be re-imagined and given the resources to meet the needs of a modern family.

“At the end of the pandemic there was an opportunity to revolutionise schools (hours, holidays, provision, expectations) which was missed, but it’s not too late to engage in a meaningful re-visioning of schools. Children and families are still reeling from austerity and pandemic. We shouldn't have children and families with so much stress, poverty and mental illnesses.”

Mr Hitchcock has copied his letter to the MP for East Devon, Simon Jupp, and has arranged to meet him later this month.