Oxfordshire education bosses warn they will be left millions of pounds out of pocket under the Government’s flagship academy programme.

They say the Government is giving too much cash to academy schools, which are free from council control.

Conservative-controlled Oxfordshire County Council’s official response to funding changes says: “Current calculations allocate excessive resources to academies. This over-funding has encouraged far more schools to seek academy status than might otherwise have been the case and for the wrong reasons.”

It says detailed analysis of the proposals shows cash would be given to academies for services the cash-strapped council would still have to provide to schools.Yet the cost of these would be taken out of the council’s cash settlement from the Government, it says.

But the Government insisted it will not have to provide the services, which the council says includes support for children with special educational needs.

The response says: “Not only would we have to reduce other local authority children’s services... other parts of the council’s services would be forced to subsidise the flawed financial arrangements proposed in the current consultation.”

If all schools converted to academies, the council would be left with a £29m black hole out of its £545.6m children, education and families budget, it says.

Melinda Tilley, cabinet member for schools improvement, said: “We are taking this very seriously.

“We need to talk to ministers about exactly how it’s going to be funded.

“It will come out of the county council’s other departments and threaten frontline services. They need to go through their papers again and rethink.”

She said she still backed the academies programme but funding must be “fair”.

There are three original academies in Oxfordshire, North Oxfordshire Academy in Banbury, Oxford Academy in Littlemore, and Oxford Spires Academy in East Oxford. King Alfred’s School, in Wantage, converted this month and Banbury School, Dashwood Primary and Wallingford School are due to convert.

Dr Fiona Hammans, headteacher of the Banbury Dashwood Schools Federation, said: “We are gaining nothing whatsoever financially from it.”

Government claims that academies could get an extra £500,000 funding have not happened at the school, she said. “The advantage for us is that we will be able to prioritise how our money is spent.”

Department for Education spokesman Amie Tilford said: “We cannot continue to fund local authorities for services they no longer need to provide to academies.

“The consultation document explains the basis on which we believe the transfer should be calculated, to be fair to local authorities, the taxpayer and all schools, including academies.”