Teachers' jobs to go in 'worst funding crisis for a decade'

Charles Clarke, the Secretary of State for Education, endured an angry reception yesterday from headteachers who told him schools were facing the worst funding crisis for more than a decade.

School reforms would be put at risk because of an "unprecedented" funding crisis that threatened to cause widespread teacher redundancies, the Secondary Heads Association warned.

Headteachers said that they faced "swingeing cuts" to their budgets for 2003-04, due to come into force next Tuesday, despite an extra £2.6bn in funding and the Government's last-minute allocation of an additional £28m this week to be shared between the 36 local authorities suffering the most.

Mr Clarke said he was "genuinely shocked" to hear the headteachers describe their budgets as the worst in years. He could not believe that was the case.

He told delegates at the union's annual conference in Birmingham that overall funding had increased, but if individual schools had lost money then officials needed to investigate why the formula had worked against them.

John Dunford, the union's general secretary, said that Mr Clarke could not ignore headteachers' complaints and called on him to ask Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, for more money.

"The funding system remains grossly unfair to children in some schools," he said.

Michael Chapman, headteacher of Driffield School, East Yorkshire, told Mr Clarke that no secondary school in his local authority could balance its budget for next year.

"In the last 12 years this is far and away the worst situation I have ever had to manage," he said. "The average shortfall is £200,000 just to stand still."

Jane Mann, headteacher of the King Edward VI school in Morpeth, Northumberland, said half of secondary schools in her area were short of an average of £100,000, with the remainder managing to balance their books by using funds they received as specialist schools. "We were extremely angered by this year's budgets," she told the conference.

The union has calculated that schools need an increase of at least 10.5 per cent to stand still over the next financial year. It accepts that government investment will mean an overall rise of 11.6 per cent, but argues that many schools have lost because the money has been distributed unevenly.

Schools face increases in national insurance, pension contributions, teachers' pay and extra allowances for London teachers.

Headteachers also complain that a new government formula for allocating money to local authorities has redistributed money from southern to northern authorities.

The association reported an eightfold increase in the number of deputy headteachers and senior managers who had already been told they were facing redundancy.

In the past two weeks 16 deputy and assistant headteachers have called the union's hotline for staff facing redundancy, compared with only two during the same period last year.

Senior teachers had been told they would be made redundant in Bedfordshire, Staffordshire, Kent and Norfolk, where Mr Clarke has his constituency, the union said.

The union has also received complaints about critical funding shortages from headteachers in Northumberland, East Yorkshire, Staffordshire and Somerset. Headteachers described their budgets as the worst they could remember receiving and said they would be forced to cut staff numbers and restrict the curriculum.

Kate Griffin, the union's president and headteacher of a comprehensive in Ealing, west London, described the nationwide cuts as "swingeing".

Anne Welsh, the union's vice-president and headteacher of George Stephenson School in North Tyneside, complained that she faced a £100,000 shortfall and feared she would have to lose five teachers, either through natural wastage or redundancies.

Linda Austin, headteacher of Swanlea School in Tower Hamlets, east London, said her budget was the "worst we've ever had" in 10 years as a headteacher. "We're £250,000 down on last year. It could mean redundancies."