Governors and staff at Ilkley Grammar School are confident that budget problems will be sorted out in the next few weeks.

Education bosses froze the school's bank account last year in a desperate bid to reduce an expected £300,000 overspend by April.

Just a few weeks into the academic year the school was prevented from spending money on books, stationery, equipment, non-emergency building repairs or special projects.

But further talks between governors and education bosses, as well as the release of extra funding by Bradford Council, has eased the pressure on the school leading to the lifting of restrictions, according to head teacher Peter Wood and the governors' chairman John Cockshott.

In the school newsletter, Mr Wood said: "We have been told that an extra £3 million will be added in each of the next three years in addition to an extra £2million carrying through from last year."

He said the formula by which education officials allocated money to each school had not yet been worked out.

"We must now wait until March to find out how the additional funding will affect this school," he added.

Ilkley Grammar was one of eight schools which received a warning about budget deficits.

But soon after the Council announced an extra £1,000,000 worth of funding for schools to ease their financial worries.

Mr Cockshott added that there would be no immediate change of name for the school when reorganisation from a three to a two-tier system of education is completed. He said it had been put on the back burner for two or three years in the interests of stability for pupils, parents, staff and governors.

A Council education spokesman said: "The extra money the Council is putting into education, together with the efforts Ilkley Grammar has made to manage its budget in the best possible way, has meant that the school is now able to comply with the new legislation concerning deficit budgets and the spending restrictions have been lifted.

"The Council is putting an extra £5 million into the education in 2000/01 and a further £3 million in each of the following two years to help raise standards of achievement in the district."

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