A NORTHWICH headteacher has warned schools 'have nowhere to go but staff cuts' amid the current funding crisis.

Simon Kidwell reassured parents there wouldn't be staff reductions at his school - Hartford Manor Primary and Nursery - this academic year, but couldn't rule them out in future.

Speaking to Nick Ferrari on LBC Radio, Mr Kidwell, who is the vice president of the National Association of Headteachers, also called on the Government to fulfil its manifesto promise to return to '2010 levels of real-term funding'.

He said: "We do have some money in our capital budget, so we’ll be plugging a hole, paying everyone’s wages and not reducing staff this academic year but the following year we are going to have to look at staffing reductions and the year after.

"Energy costs have doubled, but we are locked into a local authority energy deal, so we aren’t seeing the price hikes that other academy chains and schools have seen. It’s mostly the wage inflation that’s affecting our budget.

"At the beginning of this Parliament, they promised we would be returned to 2010 levels of real-term funding.

"We want that promise in the manifesto to be adhered to because of inflation costs, we’re now going to be facing a £2 billion black hole across the school system by the end of this Parliament.

"We want that manifesto promise stuck to because I think, during the last decade, austerity hit schools hard. We had a nine per cent cut across the last decade, so if you compare that to private schools, they had a 24 per cent real terms increase.

"Schools have got absolutely nowhere to go apart from staff cuts.

"The low-hanging fruit [which could be plucked without causing teachers, pupils, parents any pain] in my school, and other schools I know, is gone.

"We don’t have anywhere to go. Maybe increase class sizes, but we all know classrooms are built for 30 children so that would be detrimental to the cost of education.

"That’s one thing we could do, but that won’t be an easy task for many schools with small classrooms."