Efforts to drive up standards in South Lakeland and Furness schools are being jeopardised by a budget crisis despite Government claims to be pumping record amounts into education, head teachers warned this week, writes education reporter Jennie Dennett.

Secondary and primary schools are reporting serious cash shortages pushing some into the red and thwarting hopes of hiring more support staff in a bid to cut teacher workloads.

Chris Clark, a representative of secondary schools on the Cumbria Schools Forum and head teacher of Kirkby Lonsdale's Queen Elizabeth School, said: "If you take away the means to make improvements in standards inevitably you get a slowing down in the improvements of those standards."

Schools up and down the country have branded the 2003/4 payout the worst in 12 years, prompting bafflement at the Department of Education and Skills, which appeared confused about where all the money had gone. Education Secretary Charles Clarke told teachers unions he was "shocked" by their claims since funding per secondary pupil had gone up every year since Labour took office and would keep rising. Indeed, last summer Chancellor Gordon Brown announced an extra £12.8 billion over three years, calling it the "biggest sustained increase in education spending for a generation".

But in Kirkby Lonsdale, Mr Clark maintained that the missing money was no mystery. He said staffing costs which mop up most of school funds had been "escalating dramatically" as a result of increased National Insurance costs, pension contributions and pay rises as experienced staff move up the pay scale. At QES, he said, they had been forced to dig into their reserves to make ends meet as increased NI payments alone have cost the school £150,000.

"I don't think it is the Government really deliberately underfunding us," said Mr Clark. "I think there is just a failure to recognise the nature of the costs involved which are huge."

At The Lakes School, Troutbeck Bridge, the story was the same as head teacher Julia Gilchrist reported that its settlement had forced the school into debt just at the time it was hoping to develop, having emerged from two years under special measures.

"It's so depressing, we should be feeling so positive and looking forward and being excited about future prospects and now we are feeling deflated we are going to have to draw our belts in."

Mike Major, the head of Coniston's John Ruskin School, was feeling similarly short-changed having just set a budget where he was expecting to "struggle to stand still" when he had been anticipating extra cash.

"My concern is the amount of spin," he said. "I can cope with a budget going down but the rhetoric has been there is an expansion in the system' and then I have lost money.

"We are being given extra money but there's more coming out. It would appear Gordon Brown is giving me money with one hand and taking it back with the other."

At Kirkbie Kendal School, in Kendal, a £160,000 shortfall has had to be met with reserves, kicking into touch renovation plans for some of the school's older buildings and scaling back support staff recruitment aimed at reducing teacher workloads.

Terry Endacott, the Furness representative of the National Association of Head Teachers, said the county's primary schools were in exactly the same position as their secondary counterparts and many were having "to review their staffing" as a result, although he did not expect to see large scale redundancies.

Education spokeswoman for local education authority Cumbria County Council Joan Stocker laid blame for the funding crisis firmly at the door of central Government. "It ain't our fault," she said. "We have passed on all the money the DfES indicated we should."

The Education Secretary will be making a public statement Friday.

May 2, 2003 09:30