STAFF at Harrogate’s Grove Academy are preparing to take strike action to highlight the funding plight affecting the institution.

Employees at the academy are balloting across its three unions on whether to strike next month in response to funding cuts implemented by North Yorkshire County Council earlier this year.

Among those involved if the strike goes ahead will be instructor David Hamilton, who has worked with children in the Harrogate district for more than 35 years, and was awarded an MBE in 2008 for his services to the community.

“I have never supported strike action before in my career but this situation is so serious I think I have no other choice,” he said, adding that the proposed strike date, June 13, was picked to cause the least disruption to students as possible at a time when there were no exams.

It comes after the council voted in February in favour of adopting measures to overhaul its high needs budget, as the authority aims to claw back a predicted £5.7m overspend attributed to government underfunding. The restructure aims to drive down exclusion rates, in a move that will see funding shifted from its pupil referral service to school partnerships with mainstream schools.

Coun Patrick Mulligan, North Yorkshire’s executive member for education and skills, said earlier this year: “Permanent exclusions have risen significantly, despite our investment in the pupil referral service of over £4.7m each year.”

“The present system is not working.”

However, Mr Hamilton said a range of services offered by PRUs – including hands-on activities such as camping, cycling, and woodwork classes – were a key point of difference that could be lost.

“All of these opportunities are being ripped away by the cuts and the community is suffering as a result,” he said. 

John Warren, the academy’s headteacher, said: “It seems crazy and irresponsible to me that the council is willing to lose people of the calibre and experience of Dave Hamilton when there is a crisis of exclusions in Harrogate”.

“The local community will feel the brunt of these cuts when people like Dave are no longer there to help troubled young people”. 

Last month North Yorkshire’s corporate director for the children and young people’s service, Stuart Carlton, said the authority was investing £11.6m of its own funding into the high needs block over the next three years, amid tough economic circumstances.

“Although the county council, at its annual budget meeting in February, accepted a £1.5m saving in the high needs budget for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities, North Yorkshire is still investing an additional £11.6m of its own money over the next three years into the high needs block as government funding falls significantly short of the level of demand,” he said.