A FURTHER £2m has been “secretly” slashed from school rebuilding projects in the region as part of the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) fiasco.

Three local authorities – Darlington, North Yorkshire and York – have had their funding cut, having been allocated cash to prepare for the introduction of diplomas.

The councils were each awarded £8m because they were not in the early waves of BSF and needed to adapt secondary schools for diplomas, which combine work experience with academic learning.

They are among 76 education authorities that will each lose £660,000 in immediate cuts, saving the Department for Education (DfE) £50m.

The DfE made a further £170m cut from capital spending on Monday – even as Education Secretary Michael Gove cancelled the £55bn BSF programme – but the details were not revealed in the Commons.

That announcement has been condemned as a fiasco, after the list of school rebuilding schemes going ahead turned out to be riddled with errors.

Mr Gove was forced to make an embarrassing apology to MPs, admitting that schools were told their building plans had been saved, only to learn later that their dreams had died.

Darlington, North Yorkshire and York were each awarded £8m to create “world class facilities”, particularly for teenagers with special educational needs.

Darlington – because it was in a later wave of BSF – also suffered in Mr Gove’s main cull of rebuilding schemes, losing funding to remodel seven secondary schools.

The further £170m of education cuts will also slash funding for school swimming pools (£15m), information technology projects (£50m) and youth centres (£13m).

Diplomas were designed by Labour to replace GCSEs and A-levels, but their introducion humanities, science and languages was scrapped by Mr Gove last month.

Government support for existing vocational diplomas is also being scaled back, as part of a drive towards a more traditional exam system.

Meanwhile, parents, pupils and teachers at every school where rebuilding projects were scrapped have been urged to join a lobby of Parliament on July 19, to try to force the Government into a U-turn.

Chris Keates, general gecretary of the NASUWT, the largest teachers’ union, said the schools affected had been left “reeling from the devastating news”.

“It is time for schools and parents to voice their concern to Members of Parliament. I am therefore writing today to every school on the Government’s list to encourage them to support a lobby of Parliament,”

he said.

The call for a demonstration was backed by Ed Balls, the Shadow Education Secretary and a Labour leadership candidate, who also launched a website Save our Schools campaign.

Mr Balls said: “These are unfair and unnecessary cuts.

That’s why the Shadow Schools Minister, Vernon Coaker, and I are urging parents, teachers, young people and governors to join the lobby of parliament.”