A teenager fears her A-level dreams will be shattered - because of funding problems in Bradford schools.

Queensbury Upper School pupil Lynsey Asquith has been told the school may cut courses because of a £200,000 deficit which must be cleared within three years.

That could leave 16-year-old Lynsey - who wants to pursue a teaching degree - having to go to another school or college, in a bid to find her subjects.

Lynsey, of Pennine Close, Queensbury, wants to study English language, geography, French and mathematics.

"I have always given 100 per cent to my school work," she said. "No decision has been taken yet, but it is very upsetting and unsettling.

"I feel very let down. I always thought if you worked hard you got what you deserved."

Now her father, former school governor David Asquith, has written a strong letter to Education Secretary David Blunkett saying he fears Lynsey and thousands of other youngsters across the district will get a second-class education because of under-funding.

A large number of Bradford's 260 schools have budgets in the red to the tune of an estimated £2.2 million.

The schools have agreed repayment plans with the Council because they are legally bound to cover the shortfall.

Now the Council has agreed to redirect £11 million into school budgets over the next three years to try to ease the problems.

But Queensbury head Richard Moore - whose school is £200,000 in the red - says it is still unclear how the extra funding will reach the secondary schools.

He has written to Mr Asquith stating the school is now "significantly in deficit" and only courses which draw enough students or where they are confident of success will be on offer.

He says a small number of minority courses will be in serious doubt, but will try to provide them in an existing successful partnership arrangement with other schools.

But Mr Moore has pointed out all schools experience problems in predicting what they can provide at this time of the year because they have to work subjects into timetables where the maximum number of pupils can take them.

Today Mr Asquith stressed he was not criticising the school or its staff.

He said: "I have nothing but the highest praise for the school and its standards and the help it has given my daughter. But this means my daughter is in limbo, not knowing whether to leave things as they are and hope the courses she wants to take will run at the school, or apply to local colleges, who run them.

"This seems to me to be very unfair - she has enough on her plate at the moment, finishing course work, and beginning to revise for her GCSE's, which in itself is very stressful."

Mr Moore, convenor for Bradford Secondary School Head teachers Association, said: "We are still very much at the planning stage but we offer a broader range than most schools of this size."

Mr Moore said the Council had decided to give extra funding for school budgets.

"But there is some difficulty at the moment in finding where the money is appearing in secondary school budgets. We are in talks with the Chief Executive and Director of Education about it. "

He said his school would also take in a further 600 pupils this year as part of the schools reorganisation and it was unclear how the extra teachers would be funded.

Helen Lynch, head of Nab Wood Grammar School said her school was in a different situation because it was in the North Bradford Schools Commonwealth, where schools subsidised each other.

She said although her school was also in deficit there were no plans to cut courses, although there was the added problem of rising examination fees.

Director of Education Diana Cavanagh said schools had been given their draft budgets last week and would get the final amounts by the end of the month.

She said the budgets contained an extra £80 for each secondary school pupil as part of the extra £5 million extra allocated to schools in the coming year.

Mrs Cavanagh said schools had already received an extra £1 million and would get a further £3 million for each of the following two years.

This year the authority had also allowed £48 for each pupil to cover the cost of inflation.

Mrs Cavanagh said funding had also been allowed for extra staff to be employed in some schools because of the reorganisation.

She said: "This Council is concerned about funding for schools and that is why it has put in a further £11 million."

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