BUCKINGHAMSHIRE County Council could be named and shamed today by education secretary Charles Clarke for holding on to money that should have been passed to schools.

The LEA has kept back about £9.7 million.

But yesterday the LEA got its retaliation in first by emailing all the county's schools, explaining why it was doing so.

Alan Mander, schools assistant head of finance, said: "We are being up front, being clear about where money has not been allocated. We are setting this out in great detail, because we understand we may be named and shamed, or asked to improve."

Mr Clarke promised to name and shame education authorities after saying that throughout the country about £500 million for schools had been held back by councils.

Buckinghamshire is holding on to:

£3.2 million for school rates. When schools get bills they will be paid.

£700,000 for newly qualified teachers (NQTs). This money used to come via the Standards Fund and was £1,000 per term for each NQT. The money now is paid from the schools budget. It will not be distributed until January when the LEA knows how many NQTs there are.

£5.8 million Standards Fund money, which is part government grant and part LEA cash. This includes money for school achievement awards, for specialist and beacon schools, for leadership courses and for summer schools. In some case schools know they will get it, in others the LEA has not been told which schools qualify.

Marion Clayton, school cabinet member, said: "We are squeaky clean but whether Charles Clarke will see it that way is a different matter."

The government came up with the £500 million after teachers, during the Easter conferences, complained that they could not manage.

On Tuesday members of the Buckinghamshire Schools Forum warned that even more schools would be in the red this year and Paul Goodman, MP for Wycombe, initiated an adjournment debate on school funding. At the forum Catherine Hinds, Hughenden Infants School governor, said: "For the first time ever we are going to go into deficit."

Ted Brown, chairman at Sir William Borlase's Grammar School in Marlow, said the school faced a £150,000 deficit having used up savings of £150,000. "We always had a balance in the past," he said.

Bill Richards, head of Sir William Ramsay School, Hazlemere, said his deficit doubled last year and would double again.

Though schools have had a lot more money, teachers' pay is up three per cent, national insurance contributions up one per cent and pension contributions up five per cent.

Mr Mander said primary schools had had an average increase of 15 per cent, but needed 14 per cent to stand still.

In Westminster Hall, MP Paul Goodman criticised the government for moving money from the south to the north of the country and said there were pockets of deprivation even in his constituency.

Schools standards minister David Milliband said the government calculated how much money a LEA needed, saying it was designed to give similar pupils in different parts of the country similar amounts.

But he said LEAs then used their own formulae to decide how the money should be distributed to schools. LEAs and schools needed to get together and ask hard questions about whether the formulae were fair.