Clarke admits failure on schools funding

Charles Clarke admits today that some schools are facing a financial crisis, prompting fears of a swathe of teacher redundancies.

The Secretary of State for Education told The Independent on Sunday that a shake-up in the way they are funded is partly to blame. The system, introduced this year by the Government, was designed to produce a fairer distribution of resources.

But Mr Clarke admitted: "The way the formula has worked for some schools has caused difficulties. We're looking at it closely and trying to understand what has happened and what's gone wrong."

Headteachers have voiced widespread concern about redundancies. The National Union of Teachers is expected to back an emergency motion at its annual conference next weekend calling for strikes against redundancies.

Two weeks ago, at the Secondary Heads Association, Mr Clarke expressed "genuine shock" over the claims, stressing that the Government had approved an 11 per cent increase in funding this year.

Mr Clarke says local education authorities failed to pass money to schools. "There are LEAs holding much more money back for special education and other functions," he said. "My preferred option would have been for every LEA to have released it all to schools."

LEAs also held back money from the Government's standards fund, earmarked for specific projects to improve performance, for distribution later, he added. Schools also faced "quite substantial" rises in pay bills. Rises for some teachers were 8 or 9 per cent rather than the 2.9 per cent across-the-board settlement, because of changes to pay scales. The Government is giving an extra £28m to 36 LEAs facing a budget rise this year of less than 3.2 per cent.