The education of Cumbria’s children “should not be sacrificed for the sake of debt recovery”, according to secondary headteachers.

The Cumbria Association of Secondary Headteachers (CASH) have stepped into the deepening row about controversial proposals to claw back more than £8.3 million from local schools.

Cumbria’s schools forum – a panel of local experts who shape how central government funding for education is spent in the area – is looking to save £14.1 million in 2017-18 as part of efforts to meet the rising costs of supporting children with special needs.

Cumbria County Council says it has seen an 80 per cent rise in the number of requests to help children with special needs in the last two years.

Slicing three per cent from every Cumbrian school’s budget, to the tune of more than £8.3 million, is one of the proposals being considered.

Talks continues on how best to use existing central government funding for education to meet the increasing costs.

Secondary headteachers claim that the current cash crisis surrounding high needs funding should have been anticipated much earlier.

Jonathan Johnson, chairman of CASH, in a letter to the schools forum, said: “Last academic year, Schools’ Forum tabled information from health services that ante-natal drug and alcohol abuse was giving rise to increased numbers and complexity of need in infants and children.

“The rise of EHCP (Education, Health and Care Plan) referrals and the subsequent strain on the High Needs Budget cannot have been a surprise in terms of accommodating this emergence.

“We have heard that we are not the only county facing this problem and we should be better equipped to deal with matters of such profound significance.”

The headteachers’ group is calling for a “more imaginative and needs-driven response” to be drawn up to tackle short, medium and long-term pressures.

Mr Johnson, who is principal of West Lakes Academy in Egremont, said: “We accept that officers and members have a difficult role in balancing budgets and some of the strategies outlined may be viable but the [transfers] simply move the problem of debt management on to an already struggling school system.

“The erosion of funding to all the services that would normally support our children pre-assessment is yet another example of the recession finally arriving at the door of education.

“The rise in referrals is not, therefore, the fault of schools but simply schools’ reaction to a series of erosive factors that have been steadily moving towards us with increasing negative impact.

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“This should have called for forward planning on the part of those who strategically oversee these budgets beyond the scope of Schools’ Forum.”

Secondary headteachers suggest a staggered recovery over a number of years would be a much better option than current proposals.

“The system cannot afford a sudden rush to limit damage without fully solving the root cause in a carefully planned and agreed way,” Mr Johnson writes.

Headteachers are concerned that existing proposals will hit county-wide efforts to improve schools.

Mr Johnson said: “Those efforts have been rooted in building trust with all head teacher colleagues, governors and staff in all our schools and we cannot afford to irrevocably damage those relationships having invested so much time and energy in developing them.

“We are willing to help find a solution that doesn’t detrimentally affect all young people while at the same time protecting the fragile state of school funding.

“It cannot be that Cumbrian children’s education is sacrificed for the sake of debt recovery.”

Cumbria’s schools forum meets today in Carlisle to discuss the high needs funding issue. Its consultation runs until October 14.

Final decisions on potential changes would have to be agreed by county councillors before they are implemented.