A SECONDARY school is demanding to know why it is the only one allocated nothing from a £15 million pot.

Monday’s meeting of the Brighton and Hove City Council’s schools committee will discuss recommendations from officers to distribute an extra £15 million among local authority-runschools.

The money, from central Government, was earmarked for a new school but after existing secondaries agreed to take extra pupils it is now not necessary.

Six schools will split the money, £10 million of which will be shared between Varndean and Hove Park to accommodate extra pupils and fund internal modifications.

Cardinal Newman Catholic School in Hove is the only local authority-funded school not to have been earmarked a penny in the report.

Staff, governors and parents of the school have started a campaign to fight the proposal.

Headteacher Dr James Kilmartin said: “We are concerned about the process by which the proposal has been arrived at and the proposal itself.

“About half the funding has been allocated to schools which have spare places (ie are undersubscribed).

“Cardinal Newman is consistently oversubscribed.

“As a consequence of the demand, we have had to take on extra students in recent years and are now at 360 which is the largest in the city with a recent increase from 341 to 360.

“We have received no funding for our facilities to take on this extra pressure and our dining area, classrooms and PE facilities are in real need of this financial support. School headteachers have not been included in any of the discussions or meetings to decide how the funds should be allocated.”

The school has asked parents and carers to contact their councillors as a matter of urgency.

The plans to be discussed allocate £2 million to Stringer and Varndean, both in Brighton, to meet the temporary need for additional pupils from September, and previously agreed additional places in 2019 and 2020 at Stringer.

Varndean, which last year agreed to add an intake class to help a city-wide places shortage, has been earmarked £5 million to meet that cost.

Blatchington Mill School in Hove will increase its intake size but has decided to close its sixth form and will need internal modifications, so half a million has been recommended.

Hove Park School, which is based on two sites a mile apart, is reorganising which children attend classes on which site.

The officers’ report states: “In order to make best use of the accommodation in the longer term and to maximise the number of places available in the future, it is recommended that £5 million is allocated for this purpose.

“The council is aware of a number of planned housing developments in the area served by both Hove Park and Blatchington Mill.”

Patcham High has had £1 million recommended to help cope with an increase in intake and Longhill in Rottingdean has had £1 million recommended due to “anticipated house building in neighbouring authorities”.

Half a million would remain as a contingency.