Former grant-maintained schools are getting �12m a year in additional funding at the expense of other schools, it is claimed.

When Labour came to power it abolished the status which had allowed some 1,200 schools to "opt out" of local authority control, gaining extra funding for the services authorities had provided.

It set up transitional funding arrangements to ease the schools back into local education authority control - but the central grant for that has ended.

So councils now have to meet the cost, which they say they can only do by "robbing Peter" - taking it from other schools' budgets.

Top earner

Wandsworth Council in south-west London estimates that more than 50 of its schools will be up to �400,000 worse off next year as a result.

More than 200 former grant-maintained schools are involved in all, including the London Oratory, attended by one of the prime minister's sons, which benefits to the tune of more than �90,000.

The one that gets the most is Kingsbury High in Brent, north London, which has an extra �688,532 this year including money from the Learning and Skills Council for its sixth form.

Dunraven School in Lambeth receives more than �385,000 and altogether, three dozen schools each get more than �100,000.

Its principal, Richard Townsend, said the issue was not that the former grant-maintained schools were getting too much, but that other schools were not getting enough.

'Inexplicable'

The situation was exposed last January by The Education Network (Ten), which is funded by most of the local education authorities (LEAs).

Since the number of schools getting the extra money has dropped - but the main change is that the central government funding for them has stopped completely.

Ten's co-ordinator, Martin Rogers, said: "I think the situation is completely inexplicable.

"It's amazing really: this is the government's decision, therefore the government should pay and reimburse the authorities in full."

A spokesperson for the Department for Education said that transitional funding of an extra 2.5% per pupil each year - as the term implied - was not intended to be "a permanent feature of the system".

"Indeed the number of ex-GM schools benefiting from these arrangements has fallen from two thirds to less than 20% since 1999.

"Ministers review the scheme every year and will be taking another look next year at whether they can phase it out altogether and if so how fast."