ROGER Alston welcomes the changes in sixth-form funding. It means his school, William Howard in Brampton, Cumbria, will get paid for the number and type of courses it offers - rather than according to which authority it is in.

Unfortunately, reforming education funding systems is a chaotic process. Mr Alston was promised around pound;790,000 under the Government’s “real terms guarantee”. But the Learning and Skills Council made an initial allocation of pound;931,000, and confirmed that two weeks ago.

The school believes the LSC got its sums wrong on vocational courses and that the figure should be around pound;831,000.

But whether the increase is pound;141,000 or pound;41,000, Mr Alston will only see a third of it this year, because Cumbria is clawing back cash from “gainers” to compensate losers - and to plug the pound;1.5m gap between what it planned to give sixth forms and what the LSC says it should. “Because the LSC figures are wrong, no one is getting a budget, no one can plan. You go on spending money on supply teachers and electricity, but we don’t know which parts of our development programme we can afford,” said Mr Alston.

FE Focus, 37