DOZENS of Wirral schools could be hit by a "rapidly growing" black hole in their finances with a £47m bill expected in just over a year.
The latest funding for state schools was released as part of the Wirral Council's budget plans for the next financial year which will fund services between April 2025 and March 2026.
This breaks down what kind of funding schools get for the next year with a total of £403m allocated for next year.
At the moment, any deficit in school budgets, known as the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG), is kept off the council's revenue budget due to an override granted by the government in 2020 to councils across the country who were struggling to balance the books.
This is because as demand for special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) provision has grown, costs in high needs budgets have shot up too.
The government’s override is due to end in March 2026 and councils across England may need to find nearly £5bn between them by then with 43% at risk of declaring bankruptcy as a result.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson previously said schools have been “neglected to the point of crisis” and promised reform, though calls have also been made to the government to write off this debt.
Concerns have been raised by the local authority’s School Forum as the budget gap keeps getting worse each year despite increases to school funding. In April 2023, the gap was £4.7m but the latest figures published in February 2025 say the gap will be nearly £47m by March 2026.
If the government does not step in, the council will have to find this money and would likely have to effectively declare bankruptcy if the council has not already done so.
Warnings came in January from Grant Thornton, a firm appointed to annually inspect the council’s accounts, that the gap is "rapidly growing" and forecasted to reach £367,030,000 by March 2030 if no action is taken.
This could be reduced to £208,739,000 in a best case scenario, the equivalent of about half of the council's current budget. As a result, Grant Thornton urged the council "to place a significant and urgent focus on developing and implementing interventions" due to this "significant weakness."
According to the February report, the council and schools will try to keep costs increasing further before the March 2026 deadline.
Wirral Council has seen an overall increase to school budgets of nearly £40m this year despite 477 less pupils in schools.
In England, the UK Government is investing an extra £2.3bn for mainstream schools and young people with complex SEND bringing total school funding to almost £64bn. High needs funding will come to £11.9bn across the country.
A Department for Education spokesperson said: "The Budget delivered on the government’s commitment to put education back at the forefront of national life, protecting key education priorities including core funding for schools.
"Despite the challenging economic context, we are putting a further £2.3bn into schools’ budgets, with £1 billion for children and young people with high needs.
"Wirral Council is being allocated over £70 million through the high needs funding block of the dedicated schools grant (DSG), an increase of £6.4 million.
"We recognise the challenges that schools and local councils are facing, and we will continue to support and work alongside them, whilst delivering better life chances for children and young people across the country."
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