Funding 'catastrophe' will force four-day school week

Schools around the country will be forced to put pupils on a four-day week because of a "catastrophic" shortfall in their budgets this year, headteachers said yesterday.

A survey of more than 700 schools by the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) revealed that at least three quarters would be forced to make cuts as their budgets failed to keep pace with the cost of running a school, which rose by 10 per cent this year. According to the survey, about 2,000 schools will have seen their budgets reduced. Less than one in four has enough money to survive without making cuts.

Sue Sayles, the former president of the NAHT and head of Riccall primary school in North Yorkshire, said: "I've never known colleagues so angry and depressed. This is going to mean four-day weeks and huge class sizes for pupils.''

The funding crisis is a huge embarrassment for Tony Blair, who is banking on his plans to modernise the teaching profession becoming one of the first successes of his drive to improve public services.

Headteachers warned that the shortfall in school budgets was threatening to torpedo those plans. According to the association, this year's shortfall in budgets, plus further performance-related pay rises for teachers over the next two years, will have a knock-on effect on £3bn pledged by the Government for education, reducing it to £500m. The £3bn was to fund the recruitment of more classroom assistants, allowing teachers time off for marking and preparation.

"The whole remodelling of the workforce is going to be just a dream at the moment," said Ms Sayles. She said her 169-pupil school was £85,500 short this year and one teaching post would be lost as a result.

The survey published at the NAHT's annual conference in York came on the day when Charles Clarke, the Secretary of State for Education, produced a dossier which showed that 150 local education authorities in England were holding on to £590m earmarked for school budgets. Mr Clarke said the authorities had also set aside an extra £235m this year for funding central services instead of giving it to schools.

He urged them to examine their spending decisions and justify them to the Government within 10 days, pleading with them to avoid "needless redundancies'' of teachers if they could earmark more money for schools.