£500,000 school funding blunder

LOST out . . . Councillor Dave Hibbert and head teacher Christine Hill

EDUCATION chiefs have cost South Chadderton School more than £500,000, it is claimed.

After years of work it has failed to gain specialist engineering status because of “behind closed doors” changes.

This means that it loses out on a £120,000 grant which would have bought laptops and software. Also, it will not receive £392,061 extra funding over three years, including £50,000 pledged by sponsors.

Furious governor Dave Hibbert has accused the council of a cover-up.

He said: “Somebody has dropped a clanger and both parties that could have done it are denying responsibility.

“Councillor Kay Knox, cabinet member for children, young people and families, should give us all a full, frank and honest explanation of what has gone wrong.”

Councillor Hibbert believes the local authority or the charity Oasis Learning Trust is to blame. Oasis will sponsor the new academy planned to replace both South Chadderton and Kaskenmoor schools in 2010.

South Chadderton applied to the Government for specialist engineering status for three years from this September.

But head teacher Chris Hill said the Government wrote to her this month confirming the council had changed the academy specialism from engineering to maths and computing. Therefore, the application was unsuccessful.

Mrs Hill said she was not consulted about the change and that engineering had appeared in an earlier draft of the academy proposals.

Describing the loss as massive, she said: “At the end of the day it is our students at our school that are losing out in the next two to three years before the academy opens.”

The school will still be one of the first to introduce engineering diplomas next year.

Mrs Hill added: “It doesn’t mean we won’t be able to deliver the diploma but we would have been able to do it with knobs on.”

A spokesman for Oasis said the council was responsible for filling in the specialism details in the academy proposals.

A statement from Councillor Knox did not clarify who decided the academy specialisms or who submitted the proposals.

She said the money was not the issue because South Chadderton was likely to become an academy before the specialist status funding became available.

She added: “Decisions about specialist status are made by the Department for Children, Schools and Families, not the council. Their view is that the engineering specialism is not appropriate given the proposed move to academy status.”