MORE than a quarter of Brighton and Hove schools finished the last financial year in debt as the funding crisis deepens.

The number of schools with negative balances at the end of 2016/17 has tripled in the past two years from six to 18, figures obtained by The Argus show.

Across the whole of the county more schools are applying for emergency funding or special status to make ends meet.

Unions warned proposals to make savings risked reducing valuable support from pupils who needed it most, leaving staff with unreasonable workloads and poverty wages and creating uncertainty.

Dejected support staff are said to be accepting voluntary redundancy at schools looking to make cuts to payroll because they saw little future in the industry.

Hove Park School had the highest deficit of any city school for the third year running as figures show its financial difficulties are growing.

It ended the year almost £380,000 in debt, a year-on-year increase of 40 per cent following a 35 per cent rise a year earlier.

Unions have criticised the school’s response to the funding crisis which they claim includes plans to “slash” the number of technicians with remaining staff reduced to the lowest pay offer they could legally make.

Unison branch secretary Sue Beatty said it was the school’s third restructure in a year.

She added: “What management are proposing is a huge cut to the quality of education that the school will be providing and poverty wages for the people delivering it.

“Unison is determined that our members will not suffer for the mistakes of those who should have had their eye on the ball.”

Headteacher Jim Roberts said: “The pressure on school finances have been well publicised over the course of the year.

“We have worked hard to plan a budget that will significantly reduce from its current deficit position over the next couple of years while at the same time continue to provide the best possible teaching, curriculum and pastoral care for all our students. “

Earlier this year The Argus reported some 80 jobs at around a dozen city schools were under threat as schools took drastic action to make ends meet.

Mark Turner, GMB branch secretary, said: “We have not had confirmation of forced redundancies yet but we are getting a lot of people who are using the opportunity to get out of the industry.

“In some cases we have more staff volunteering to go than there are redundancy offers available, the morale among the workforce is very low.

“We have averted some of the job losses but in some cases it will be just a stay of execution, the problem is not going to go away.

“We will have a consultation with our members over the summer about a long-term response to the cuts if this is not resolved.”

In West Sussex 27 schools shared more than £330,000 in hardship funding in 2016/17 compared with 15 sharing £205,000 the year before.

A further 13 in financial difficulty were unsuccessful in bids for support from the council.

A West Sussex County Council spokeswoman said its hardship fund will decrease for this financial year because of recent academy conversions.

She added: “Schools that cannot set a balanced budget are required to seek approval from WSCC for a licensed deficit budget. This requires a recovery plan to show action the school will take to reduce its expenditure over an agreed period.”

In East Sussex 11 schools ended the year in the red compared with seven in 2015/16 and three in 2014/15.

Seven were given special dispensation to run negative budgets compared to just one in 2015/16.

A council spokeswoman said: “It is clear schools are operating under increasing financial pressure.

“However, each school operates in different circumstances and there may be numerous reasons for their financial position being as it is.”

PARENTS, PUPILS AND TEACHERS TAKE BATTLE FOR FAIR FUNDING TO NUMBER 10

THE fight of parents, pupils and teachers for fair funding for their schools will be taken straight to Number 10 today.

Members of the Save Our Schools campaign in both Brighton and Hove and West Sussex will join colleagues across the country to campaign outside Downing Street.

Tens of thousands of messages, many written by schoolchildren talking about their love for their schools, will be delivered to the corridors of power.

Actor Steve Coogan, who owns a home in Ovingdean, will join the high-profile protest along with city MPs Caroline Lucas, Peter Kyle and Lloyd Russell-Moyle.

A “peaceful action” will be held outside Downing Street gates where a pop-up art installation of more than 20,000 SOS messages in bottles will be unveiled and protesters will sing their own version of The Police’s Message in a Bottle.

The protest will then move on to Trafalgar Square where children will float their messages in the fountain as a symbolic act of protest against education cuts.

Among messages designed to move the emotions of ministers to right the underfunding of the school system, one Year 6 pupil Jasmine said: “I love doing things like bikeability because I don’t have a bike at home.”

Another Year 6 pupil Tommy said: “I love my teaching assistants and how happy and jolly they are and how sometimes they sacrifice their lunch breaks to help us.”

The action is the latest stage of an ongoing protest organised by SOS campaigners which has included banners being unfurled at some 55 schools across Brighton and Hove detailing the level of cuts suffered by schools while the campaign also held a mass school assembly at two city parks in May at which many of the messages of support were created.

Education Secretary Justine Greening has been receiving a letter a day written by pupils, parents and teachers from the campaign since last month and will continue to do so until the Budget in November.

Mr Coogan said: “I’m fully supporting all the parents leading the fantastic Save our Schools Campaign.

“Forcing politicians to seriously consider the funding cuts to our state school system.

“We cannot live in a society where we have a state education system that is stripped to the bone and where the arts and sport are the preserve of children whose parents can afford to pay for them.”

Save Our Schools co-founder Alison Ali, whose twin daughters attend St Luke’s Primary in Brighton, will make a speech at Downing Street.

Ahead of the protest she said: “Despite years of repeated warnings about the funding crisis from stressed heads and teachers, and despite Parliament’s own select committee on spending saying the Department of Education is suffering “collective delusion” on funding, the Government continues to fudge the issue.

“Now parents are seeing the real effects of these cuts in their schools, as teachers and TAs are made redundant and class sizes balloon.

“We’ll continue to protest until schools get their £3 billion per year back and until our children get the forward-looking, broad-based education they deserve.

“We hope the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Education are prepared to actually sit and read these poignant messages from tens of thousands of children around the UK and then act upon them.”

Green MP Ms Lucas said: “Parents and teachers are already fundraising to pay for essential equipment like pens and glue sticks – the situation in Brighton and Hove is getting desperate.

“What schools need is £7 billion by 2022 to ensure that teachers have the resources they need and every child has the best possible education.

“I fully support the fight for fair and full funding for schools – there must not be any real terms per pupil funding cuts – and I will continue speaking out in Parliament in support of a world class education for every child.”

In response to an urgent question on school funding in Parliament on Tuesday, Schools Minister and Bognor Regis and Littlehampton MP Nick Gibb said: “This Government are determined to ensure that all pupils regardless of where they live receive a world-class education and over the past seven years, we have made significant progress.

“We want to ensure that every school has the resources it needs, which is why we have protected the schools budget in real terms since 2010.

“We recognise that schools face cost pressures beyond the total amount of funding going in.

“We have gone further than any previous Government in reforming school funding.

“The second stage of our consultation on a national funding formula for schools closed in March and I am grateful to the 25,000 people who responded.

“It is important that we consider carefully how to proceed and, as outlined in our manifesto, we will make sure that no school has its budget cut as a result of the new formula.

“We are spending record amounts on school funding: £41 billion this year, rising to £42 billion in 2019-20 with increasing pupil numbers.”

He was accused of playing games by Brighton Pavilion MP Caroline Lucas who said it was insulting to schools that he refused to admit he had not protected per-pupil funding.

Brighton Kemptown MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle accused the Mr Gibb of using Orwellian double-speak to describe an increase in the budget when in real terms budgets had not increased in the last seven years, teachers have had a £3-per-hour cut in their wages and morale is at rock bottom.

SCHOOLS FUNDING CRISIS IN NUMBERS

Brighton and Hove

Number of schools that overspent in 2016/17: 18 (out of 67) including 12 primary, three secondary and three special schools Compared with 11 (2015/16) and six (2014/15) Hove Park School has the highest deficit of £379,613 (2016/17) compared to £198,135 (2014/15) and £268,314 (15/16).

East Sussex

Seven schools applied for permission for licensed deficit in 2016/17 with shortfalls of up to £252,882 at Uplands Community College, Wadhurst. Three were approved.

Out of 146 schools, 11 had a negative balance.

West Sussex

Twenty seven schools shared £334,000 in hardship funds in 2016/17. A further ten primary schools, two secondary schools and one special school had applications denied.