There are no plans to cut school spending next year

The overspend came to light in a recent review of the authority's finances.

The council is also bracing itself for a damning Oftsed report into its management of education services.

Council leader Andrew De Freitas says the authority will urge Education Secretary Charles Clarke to fund the extra �5m it is ploughing into schools.

Social deprivation

The authority will spend about �87m on schools in the current year, compared with the government's assessment that it should be spending about �82m.

Mr De Freitas said: "We do have problems of social deprivation in this area and are investing heavily in our schools, which we believe is the right thing to do.

"The �5m we pay to schools over the government's assessment cannot be withdrawn, nor do we feel it should be.

"We also believe this money should not be borne by the council tax payers of North East Lincolnshire.

"Therefore, I shall be leading a cross-party delegation to lobby the Secretary of State for Education to increase the government's funding to the council."

No cuts planned

The council says that if it fails to secure the extra central government funding, the �5m will have to come from another part of its �180m budget.

And it warned it could find itself with a similar overspend in the next financial year.

"At the moment, there is no plan to cut spending on schools next year," said Mr De Freitas.

Meanwhile, the results of a local education authority inspection carried out by Ofsted in October are due to be published early in December.

"There is talk that we will get a very bad Ofsted report," said Mr De Freitas.

"We cannot comment on that in detail until it has been published.

"But we do recognise we have a problem and we are taking the right course of action in saying we need to have a meeting with the Education Secretary to discuss our problems in North East Lincolnshire."