Schools are facing disappointment with the amount of money they are getting to pay for more teachers, as part of the drive to cut class sizes. BBC South Education Correspondent, Jay Andrews, reports.

The county of Dorset illustrates the scale of the problem caused by the government's promise that no five, six, or seven-year-olds should be in classes of 30 or more by the year 2002.

It has 107 primary school classes with over 30 children in them, involving more than 40 per cent of the county's primary schoolchildren.

The schools concerned are still waiting to hear which of them will benefit from this year's extra cash, which has come from the £22m announced by the Department for Education and Employment specifically for extra teaching staff - though only for this year.

Tony Higgens: "Quality suffers"

Manor Park First School, in Dorchester, is one of the schools that has bid for some of the money. All its classes have more than 30 pupils, making life difficult for the staff.

"It means for example that when we've got assembly it's difficult to get everyone into the hall," said the head, Tony Higgens.

"In teaching time, really it's the quality time with children that suffers: individual tuition or individual time to sit and talk - those things get encroached upon."

Shortfall

Across the region the picture is mixed. In Surrey, for instance, only 16 per cent of children are in classes of more than 30. In Hampshire and Berkshire it is about 30 per cent.

East Sussex is almost as bad as Dorset.

Counties say they have not received enough money to tackled the issue. Dorset calculated that it needed £1.3m. Bids were limited to £1m, so that is what it asked for. It has been given £300,000.

Alex Middlemas: "It will involve the use of temporary contracts"

Teaching unions can see problems ahead. Alex Middlemas of the National Association of Schoolmasters and Union of Women Teachers says schools will have a problem planning, given that the long term funding is not yet secure.

The local authority is also concerned.

"There seems to be a suggestion that we may have to provide additional teachers and even additional classrooms if the addition of the 31st child would not be solved in any other way," said Dorset's Director of Education, Richard Ely.

"And therefore that has huge resource implications for us which we've barely begun to gauge yet."

The local authority will make the decision on who gets what on Friday, just before the half term holiday. It will target "areas of greatest need" - but with the preference being given to schools which can achieve cuts in class sizes by employing extra staff as opposed to building more classrooms.

The simple arithmetic of it means that most schools are going to be disappointed.

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