PARENTS and friends of a Powys secondary school named as one of the best in Wales are preparing a legal challenge to try to get more funding for the school.

The Level The Playing Field pressure group has been crowdfunding to raise enough money to start proceedings against Powys County Council (PCC).

They need to issue PCC with a legal challenge by April 15, which is the deadline for starting a Judicial Review.

This is because the new funding formula for schools in Powys was passed by cabinet on January 15.

Level the Playing Field say that Crickhowell High receives £300 less per pupil than any other secondary school in Powys or Wales.

Parent Eliane Wigzell, who is co-ordinating the campaign, said: “We have raised enough to start judicial review proceedings.

“We now have lawyers working on a case on our behalf.

“There are many schools around Powys watching what is happening as we and others are being pushed into deficit by inadequate funding.

“There is concern at the unfairness in funding, worries about staff cuts and fewer subject options and underlying concern this is going to end up with a fall in standards.”

The school has more than 900 pupils and 200 in the sixth form, and unlike other schools in Powys the roll has been growing rather than falling.

Crickhowell High receives £3,673 per pupil while the average across the county for secondary schools is £4,849.

Chairman of governors at Crickhowell, Andrew Fryer, said: “We must emphasise that the campaign is being run by friends of the school and parents, not staff or governors, but I am broadly sympathetic of their action.”

The school has a deficit of £900,000 and Level the Playing Field says that £344,000 has been run up because PCC has been slow to release funding for pupils who come from outside of Powys.

The school takes pupils from nearby schools that are nearby but over the border in Blaenau Gwent and Monmouthshire.

A third of pupils at the school are from outside of Powys and this is set to increase in the future.

Last month the council’s cabinet member for eduction, Myfanwy Alexander, highlighted the large number of pupils from outside Powys attending the school and also said the council was supporting the school in tacking its deficit and what she called its "large management costs".

At the time the council said it was "untrue" to say it wasn’t supporting the school.

Councils receive funding from the Welsh Government based on the number of pupils on school rolls, regardless of where they are from.

A spokesman for Powys council said: “Schools are funded in-line with the School Funding (Wales) Regulations 2010 which provides support for school based on the number of pupils on roll at the start of the year.

“The allocation is not dependent on the location of the school or the home county of the pupils.

“The regulations require 70 per cent of funding to be based on numbers but can include factors such as education through the medium of Welsh, special education needs, free school meals – aspects that are included in our fairer funding model.

“The allocation is reliant on school pupil numbers which is historic and could be out of date at the time of allocation.”