HEADTEACHERS have told council chiefs to go back to the drawing board over controversial proposals to claw back more than £8m from Cumbria’s schools.

The senior staff also warn that any moves to address the rising cost of providing support for children with high levels of special education needs could be “equally unpalatable”.

For now, a plan to transfer up to £8.7m from school budgets to plug an overspend in high needs funding - a three per cent clawback from every school next year - will not be recommended.

Other options will be explored and a budget recovery plan will be developed by council chiefs. Proposals being considered include:

* Cutting top-up funding schools receive from Cumbria County Council for children with existing education, health and care plans. Schools would have to provide the first 10 hours of support, rather than the existing eight.

* From April 2017, schools would fund the first 16 hours of support for children with new EHCPs.

* Bringing children being educated out of the county back into local mainstream schools, subject to parental agreement.

The overspend has come from a significant increase in the number of children needing specialist care, after the council revealed an 80 per cent rise in cases over the past two years.

Today the Evening Mail reveals exactly how much schools across the area stand to lose, should the proposals be brought back to the table.

A consultation on the plans will run until Friday October 14 but education leaders say they will stand firm against the cuts.

Members of Cumbria’s Schools Forum - a panel of local headteachers and education leaders who help shape how central government funding for schooling is spent - unanimously agreed yesterday not to recommend the clawback from schools while alternatives are explored.

Pete Mills, headteacher of Captain Shaw's CE Primary School in Bootle, believes any cuts in funding will hit the children who need it the most.

He said: "As a headteacher my personal drive is to give every child their best possible life chances. Any cut to a school budget makes this goal a little harder to achieve. I think these cuts are particularly hard to swallow as they are directly hitting the resources of the children who arguably need it the most.

"For schools with a larger percentage of high needs this has huge implications, and will ultimately lead to job losses and the inability to meet the needs of children as effectively."

The schools forum will meet again later this month to draw up recommendations for the county council’s ruling cabinet to consider next month.

Caroline Walker, headteacher of Parkside GGI Academy in Barrow, is calling for the council to find the money elsewhere and warns that children will pay the ultimate price for their mistake.

She said: "Many schools will be going into deficit because of this and it's too short notice; it's not our deficit and we're the ones being punished by having to make redundancies.

"The ones who will pay the ultimate price for this will be the children in our schools - especially the ones with special needs.

"My school is one of the least hit with £17,000 but other schools in our trust are hit with £25,000 and could lose teaching and teaching assistant jobs.

"These are the people who are on the ground making a real difference."

Branding the time scale of the cuts as "ridiculous", Mrs Walker is calling for council bosses to find another way of sourcing the money to ensure all children get the support they need.

She said: "The council needs to look at ways of saving money. They can't just claw it back in six months' time.

"Why didn't we know about this deficit until now? They've been handing this out year on year without saying anything. Why are we paying the price for their mistake?"

<strong> Related content: Cumbria's schools could face drastic cuts to plug £8m overspend </strong>

<strong> Roadshow inspires young scientists and engineers in Millom </strong>