NON-teaching staff are facing potential redundancies as a Barrow school aims to tackle a large projected deficit and improve its rating with the school watchdog.

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Furness Academy’s new head says a proposed restructure of its associated staff and reduced costs will assist the school with its improvements towards becoming an “excellent” school.

The Barrow secondary wants to tackle a predicted in-year budget deficit of more than £500,000 for this financial year and eight per cent national real-term funding cuts.

Furness Academy celebrated its best-ever GCSE results this summer and it is on an improvement drive which has been recognised by Ofsted.

It has a new headteacher in Simon Laheney and a new sponsor in BAE Systems.

Improvements for the school also include setting a balanced budget. Mr Laheney said that financially the academy has been “living beyond its means” as a result of unplanned and excessive staffing, particularly in associate staff.”

The head said the associate staff structure is “not fit for purpose”, saying there needs to be clear lines of accountability, roles and responsibilities to deliver the best outcomes for students. The staffing had been based on a significantly higher number of pupils than those on the roll now.

Associate staff and union representatives have been invited to attend a reshaping consultation meeting on Friday.

Mr Laheney said: “It is inevitable that all schools or academies will be facing financial hardship with an eight per cent real-term cut in funding. Furness Academy is not immune from this and it is also inevitable that further strong leadership decisions need to be taken to ensure that we keep on our improvement journey towards becoming an excellent school.

“We have already seen that the strong leadership and governance measures already taken have been positively recognised by Ofsted on two separate occasions and have seen a continued improvement in examination results.

“During this process I will be working closely with professional association representatives.”

Chairman of governors, Tony Burbridge, said the leadership team had the support of the governors.

Steve Forbes, an official for the GMB in Barrow, said: “We have been approached by Furness Academy about the consultation meeting on Friday to discuss a possible restructure. We will be attending.”