Deadline for school funding dispute

Some secondary schools say they are hundreds of thousands of pounds short

The argument over school budget shortages is reaching a crunch point, as the deadline arrives for local authorities to explain their funding decisions.

Head teachers and teachers' unions have warned that many schools in England face budget cuts - and are threatening staff redundancies.

And in response, the government has argued that funding held by local education authorities - the so-called "missing millions" - has still to be passed on to schools.

The Monday deadline has been given by the education department for authorities to justify their funding allocations, pointing to more than £590m intended for schools that had not been allocated - more than £20m in the case of two councils.

Ministers have stressed there might be very good reasons for the money being held back, but they want local authorities to clarify their decisions.

Tough reply

The covering letter from the Education Secretary, Charles Clarke, to LEAs said: "The purpose of this exercise is not to apportion blame but to solve problems."

The only way governors, head teachers and parents can be assured of the whole truth is if a full, impartial and detailed inquiry is undertaken

Warwickshire education officer, Eric Wood

Local authorities say they are doing only what they do every year, keeping money in reserve for such things as the induction of new teachers.

They cannot allocate this money to any particular schools until they know who has been recruited in September.

A typically robust response from Warwickshire rebutted the DfES analysis indicating that £5.5m of its increase this year had not been devolved to schools.

The county education officer, Eric Wood, described the claims as "completely inaccurate" and "totally unfair".

"There is no missing money held by Warwickshire. All budgets have been allocated by the county council in line with the vital priorities of school improvement, capital and special educational needs."

He put the blame on the government.

Inquiry demanded

"The plain fact is that the very significant cost pressures imposed on schools and the LEA by the decisions of central government have been underestimated in the national grant allocation to education," Mr Wood said.

"At the same time, the DfES completely over-publicised and exaggerated the potential real growth schools would receive and these expectations have not been fulfilled."

He called for "a full, impartial and detailed enquiry" by a select committee of the House of Commons.

The department has said that, if heads knew the money was going to come their way eventually, they would stop worrying about being short now.

But head teachers at the recent National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) conference said this was nonsense: they worked very closely with their LEAs and knew exactly how much they might get later in the financial year.

The NAHT reckons the government simply got its sums wrong. It estimates schools needed at least an extra 10% this year just to "stand still".

'Not enough'

The main increased costs related to the teachers' pay rise - including the shortening of the main pay "ladder" - assistants' pay rise, and higher employers' pension and National Insurance contributions.

On the basis of a survey of 700 of its members, the NAHT said only 22% had got at least the 10% they needed in their combined individual school budgets and Standards Fund allocations. It said 17% had actually had a decrease, year on year.

The government says it put an extra £2.7bn into education in England this year. It accepts there were much higher costs, but says there should have been £250m above what schools needed to cover those.

But that would be only about £10,000 per school on average - perhaps the cost of one classroom assistant.

And £250m is less than 1% of the total funding. In other words, if someone who spends £100 on their weekly shopping bought an extra loaf of bread, they would use up the extra. So the margin for error was tiny.

The NAHT estimates that, far from there being a "cushion" of £250m, schools this year are in debt nationally to the tune of more than £200m.