NORTH Yorkshire schools chiefs are to write to Education Secretary Charles Clarke to tell him they need more than £25 million to get out of a cash crisis.

Cynthia Welbourn, the director of education at North Yorkshire County Council, has written a draft letter to Mr Clarke outlining the full scale of the problem.

She says that at present the county's schools are facing a deficit of £9m.

She adds: "If we were also to provide real increases to recover this year's shortfall, as evidenced by in-year deficits of £9m, the total extra resources required would be of the order of £26m."

In the letter, which will be discussed by the county council's ruling executive tomorrow, she says about 20 schools are in deficit.

The remaining schools, in the vast majority of cases, are running down their balances and the position is not sustainable. She says: "In some cases the schools' rolls are falling, so staffing costs will be reduced proportionately to deal with that.

"But in most cases the situation demands a real increase in funding in 2004/5 unless schools are to worsen in real terms."

She says although the decision to reverse previously-planned cuts in Standards Funds was welcome, it would not solve the problem caused by the low level of core funding.

A further concern was the local education authority's ability to implement "workforce transformation".

This process was announced in January, and aims to free teachers to spend more of their time on teaching and to focus on the individual learning needs of all their pupils.

The aim is to get more support staff in extended roles, extra help for teachers which will include them having personal administrative assistants, additional technical support, new managers from outside education, cover supervisors and high level teaching assistants.

Ms Welbourn says she believed an extra £3.5m would be needed for the scheme, which represented about five per cent of the existing budget for primary school teachers.

She said the guarantee of an increase in the level of available funding based on pupil numbers was helpful, but the council was concerned this may be based on national averages.

She said: "An average increase may well not be sufficient to enable schools in North Yorkshire to regain the ground lost this year and implement the workforce agreement."

Updated: 11:37 Monday, August 04, 2003