Northumberland schools facing cuts

Last night there were warnings that the cuts would harm children's education and hit teachers' morale.

Coun Peter Jackson, leader of the Conservative group at the county council, said schools in Northumberland had set working budgets several months ago, only to be told shortly before the current financial year began on April 1 that each was to have a further cut of around 3%.

He said: "Not only is this going to cause major problems to the morale of our teachers but it will stretch scarce teaching resources and lead to problems with the education of our younger generation.

"There is every possibility that this will affect our teaching service in some way.

"The late imposition of the budget cut does seem to be due to the council getting its forecasts wrong for the school budgets."

Ponteland High School headteacher at Stephen Prandle said: "I do know that there are many headteachers in Northumberland who, to survive with the budget given to us, will need to cut staff.

"We are very fortunate in Ponteland that we have been able to maintain a small working surplus over recent years and that is likely to protect us from staff cuts.

"It is the tightest budget I have worked with for six years in Northumberland."

Vin Wynne, Northumberland secretary of the teaching union NUT, said: "The number of children in the county is fewer and in some areas the number of teaching staff has also fallen. It's been a pattern which we have observed for a number of years. If it wasn't for teachers retiring, or leaving for other posts, then the number of redundancies would be higher, I'm sure.

"We would like to work with schools and the local authority as a means of improving the teacher-pupil ratio and improving the educational experience."

Mike Brown, chairman of the Northumberland Schools Forum, chair of governors at Ponteland High School and a governor at the village middle school, said: "I feel as a big picture Northumberland is very close to the bottom of the league for school funding per pupil.

"There is a strong feeling that we do not have really have the rural sparsity recognised, the problems of working in an area with pupils very thinly spread."

A council spokesperson said: "The budget allocation is very complex and is based on a range of factors such as intake of pupil numbers, funding allocated from the Learning and Skills Council for post 16 pupils and funding accrued in previous years - schools are able to carry forward funding from one year to the next. Decisions on how a school budget is spent and/or planned savings needed is determined by its governing body."