A number of schools are to receive extra cash to cover the teachers’ pay award after the Department for Education admitted “double-counting” pupil numbers.

In an update on its website, the DfE states that the miscalculation related to numbers of Reception pupils from September this year to March next year.

It says: “Where minor discrepancies have occurred and schools have been allocated funding slightly below the correct level, we will provide further funding to bring them up to their correct allocation.

”All schools will receive at least the amounts indicated in the published tables and no school will lose out as a result. Details of this additional funding will be provided shortly.”

The DfE says the issue has “not had a substantive effect” on the distribution of the grant, which is £508 million, to be shared between schools to cover the cost of the pay rise above the first 1 per cent, which the department says schools should already have budgeted for.

The teachers’ pay grant allocations for the period September 2018 to March 2019 have now been republished.

But headteacher Jules White, coordinator of the WorthLess? campaign for better funding in schools, said: “The DfE has 11,000 employees with a salary and pension bill of half a billion pounds. One would hope that they could get these things right and not add to our confusion over pay.”

The DfE says that in 89 per cent of schools affected, the underpayment amounted to less than £300. 

Earlier this month, Tes reported that schools with high numbers of disadvantaged pupils would lose out on pay-grant allocations partly because they tended to have lower teacher-to-pupil ratios, according to research.