REBELLION is afoot as budget-blasted schools across Teignbridge and the rest of Devon consider their battle strategies in the wake of new and ‘unfair’ funding arrangements.

There are winners and losers in the proposed government handouts – but county education chiefs argue that six out of 10 pupils will be effectively short-changed in the cash share-out to the tune of £24 million.

Figures show that six out of 10 schools will actually receive extra resources, although most beneficiaries are smaller establishments. Their big brothers don’t fare so well.

Governors and staff at Ashburton’s South Dartmoor Community College have described their financial outlook as ‘bleak and depressing.’

Principal Hugh Bellamy said he had not seen such heavy pressures in an education career spanning more than 30 years.

‘What we are experiencing is incomparable in terms of the pressure that schools are now under. The future is very, very challenging,’ he said on Wednesday.

He revealed that huge efforts were being made to keep staffing numbers at levels which could maintain the school’s impressive academic record. South Dartmoor has the best performing sixth form in Devon.

But in the funding stakes Mr Bellamy’s school is set to lose out by £70,000 a year if the newly-announced formula is accepted.

School governor and Ashburton deputy mayor Cllr Sarah Parker-Khan said: ‘Lots of financial squeezes are coming at us from all directions. We really need to make a noise about this.’

She said schools such as South Dartmoor had suffered a ‘raw deal’ for long enough.

‘At the moment the situation looks very dire. We need to be up in arms. I feel another protest coming along,’ she complained, referring to the recent town demo on community hospital closures.

In Teignmouth, the resort’s mayor, Cllr Terry Falcao, has launched a countywide campaign against the cuts which will see four local schools lose out to the tune of £100,000.

A Devon County Council spokesman said this week: ‘A large majority of the children in county schools will be even worse off than they are now. Devon would get an extra £0.4 million in education grant but this does not even cover rising costs.

‘County pupils would still be funded at £268 a head less than the current national average. That adds up to £24 million less coming to Devon schools if they were funded at the national average.’

Local MPs are being lobbied to persuade the Government to amend its unfair formula proposals before the end of the national consultation period next month.

The authority’s schools spokesman James McInnes said: ‘Fair funding was always about county schools getting more money – not having money taken away. No school in Devon should lose money as a result of these proposals.’

He said local under-resourced schools had produced outstanding results for long enough – and now they deserved a fair share of the education budget cake.

Those losing out in Teignbridge include Bovey Tracey Primary, Bradley Barton in Newton Abbot, Buckfastleigh Primary, Canada Hill in Ogwell, Chagford, Chudleigh, Decoy in Newton Abbot, Highweek Primary, Kingskerswell Primary, Teign School in Kingsteignton and South Dartmoor in Ashburton.

The planned cuts range between 0.6 per cent and 1.5 per cent. The sums lost vary from £70,000 at South Dartmoor to £7,000 at Chagford.