Clarke 'did not mislead MPs' on funding

The government has been accused of 'complacency' over schools funding

The government has denied claims that Education Secretary Charles Clarke misled MPs over the schools funding crisis.

Mr Clarke told the Commons last week that he believed the number of teachers who would be made redundant this summer would be "of the same order as recent years" and dismissed claims that up to 3,000 jobs would go.

But a Department for Education and Skills (DfES) email sent the following day to local education authorities (LEAs) and leaked to the Evening Standard newspaper said it was "not possible to assess the position with certainty".

Officials asked LEAs to fill in a questionnaire on redundancies and how many were the result of falling pupil numbers or were attributable to budget deficits.

'Detailed information'

The email read: "You will understand that, given the intense media speculation about potential teacher job losses, it is in all our best interests if we can establish the most robust picture, at the national level possible."

Every year, LEAs and schools have until the last working day in May to issue provisional redundancy notices.

Some teaching posts are lost each year when pupil numbers fall.

But a BBC survey of LEAs found 760 staff would have to go at the end of this term because of the current funding crisis in schools.

The DfES pointed out that Mr Clarke had gone on to tell MPs: "We are not in a position to make an estimate (of the total number of redundancies) at this stage."

A spokesman said that that showed he had not misled Parliament.

"We have based all our statements on detailed information provided by local education authorities.

"We have continuous assessment which is comprehensive and more accurate than some of the rather partial surveys that have appeared in some of the media."

But Doug McAvoy, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers said: "It looks as if the Education Secretary may well have mislead Parliament.

"If he has, it is yet another example of the government being complacent about the seriousness of the problem facing individual schools.

"We are in the midst of a teacher shortage, teachers' workload continues to rise and yet teachers are being laid off because the government got its sums wrong when working out funding for schools this year.

"It didn't even allocate sufficient money to cover the cost of the increased charges it imposed on them.

"It is not good enough for the Education Secretary to treat the issue in this way."

Mr Clarke has promised to consider changes to the way money for schools is distributed and could introduce a national funding formula for schools.

He already has powers under the 2002 Education Act to set minimum funding levels and it is understood he is ready to use them to guarantee every school gets more than enough to cover their costs in the next financial year.

The DfES had previously insisted that putting more money into schools than was envisaged in last year's three-year spending review was only a "conceptual" possibility.