A Dickensian scene at UK's top state school

Pupils at Tiffin Girls' School, a grammar school in Kingston-upon-Thames, are all lined up in five rows of 30 and taught 150 to a class. They only get half a day's schooling a day because teachers believe it would be too stressful learning in these conditions for longer. For the remainder of the day, they are given work to do at home.

"It's pre-Dickensian," admitted Pauline Cox, the headteacher of the 879-pupil school.

However, it looks as though they will have to carry on being taught in this way for some time to come, due to a wrangle over repairing the school's buildings.

The fire on 15 December, which destroyed 15 classrooms, the school's kitchen and all its lavatories, caused an estimated £1m worth of damage. This included the school's maths and computing equipment, bought after it raised enough sponsorship to qualify to become one of the Government's new specialist secondary schools.

It is also a "beacon school", given extra cash to pass on its teaching expertise to others. "I've had enough jokes about that - a beacon school burning down," said Mrs Cox.

But insurers will only cough up enough to repair the buildings to their previous state. They were built in the 1950s with no corridors between the classrooms, which themselves fall 20 per cent short of modern space requirements. Officials have estimated it would cost between £4m and £5m to modernise the school.

Mrs Cox said: "The Government has a programme - Building Schools for the Future - under which every school will be rebuilt to a standard fit for the 21st century over the next 15 years.

"The trouble is Kingston will be one of the last authorities on the list because exam results are good and it's a relatively affluent area. The Government is giving priority to poor schools in deprived areas whose results are not so good.

"What we are saying is that it makes no sense to rebuild the school to 1950s standards now - and then go through another rebuild in the next 15 years. Why not give us priority because of what happened and seize the chance to give us modern teaching conditions?"

A spokesman for the Department for Education and Skills said that money from the Building Schools for the Future scheme would not start to be allocated until next year. Until then, the school would have to rely on Kingston-upon-Thames Council for any extra finance to rebuild the school.