School Gate: I'm only 13 and I'm worried about the cuts in funding

Schools and colleges are threatening to take legal action against the Government over its “incompetent and dishonest” handling of funding for sixth-form students, which could jeopardise the education of 50,000 teenagers.

Robin Bevan, head teacher of Southend High School for Boys, in Essex, said that schools and colleges were considering seeking a judicial review to establish whether correct procedures were followed by the Learning and Skills Council (LSC), a government agency, when it cut sixth-form funding.

Schools and colleges in England were informed of their “final” budgets for the current year in early March, only to find out last week that the amount was being cut by an estimated £200 million across the country.

The explanation for the cuts was contained in a footnote buried on page 13 of a funding letter from the LSC, stating that it had reduced the number of students that it had originally agreed to fund. In Mr Bevan’s case, student numbers were cut from 274 to 264, slicing £80,000 from his budget.

The Government has blamed the funding gap on an unexpected jump in the number of sixth-form students, supposedly caused by the recession.

But Mr Bevan said that the LSC knew of the numbers in January. Speaking at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers’ annual conference in Liverpool, Mr Bevan said: “In January every school and college with a sixth form provided [the LSC] with numbers of students. All they had to do was add up the numbers. I don’t think it is anything short of incompetent. I would go as far as to say it was dishonest.”

The LSC has apologised for misleading schools into thinking that their funding letter last month represented a final budget, and ministers have said that they are looking across the Government to find more money.

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