Clarke is blamed for funding crisis in schools

Charles Clarke, the Secretary of State for Education, must share the blame for the school budget crisis that is threatening to make teachers redundant, according to an analysis of the funding problems published yesterday.

Mr Clarke and local education authorities have blamed each other for the funding problems which have seen schools facing shortfalls of up to £400,000 this year. However, both central and local government were responsible for the crisis, the survey of schools by the Secondary Heads Association has concluded.

The Government was to blame for "spin" which led to high expectations about school funding this year, leading to "misplaced optimism" among headteachers about their budgets for 2003-04, the report found. John Dunford, the association's general secretary, said: "The truth is that both central and local government must accept their share of the blame. Ministers have, at the very least, been guilty of over-optimism. The situation is very worrying."

The report came as Mr Clarke prepared to publish his analysis today of what went wrong with this year's school budgets. Mr Clarke has blamed local authorities for failing to allocate £500m to schools and is expected to publish a list of councils which have withheld money from school budgets.

While headteachers were led to expect rises of between 3.2 and 7 per cent, in reality there was only a national real increase of 1 per cent, while locally many schools actually saw a decrease in funds, the association said.

Ministers were also to blame for the "massive turbulence" in the school funding system because of the many changes this year, it said. In particular, the new funding formula redistributed funds between authorities, leading to real-term cuts in some areas.