Central government should intervene earlier and more often in local authorities when it has financial concerns about maintained schools, auditors have said today.

The recommendation was made in a report by the National Audit Office (NAO), which warned of the financial challenges facing secondary schools.

Whitehall has estimated that mainstream schools will have to find savings of £3bn by 2019/20 to counteract cumulative cost pressures, such as pay rises and higher employer contributions to national insurance and the teachers' pension scheme.

The proportion of maintained secondary schools spending more than their income increased from 34% in 2010/11 to 59% in 2014/15, the NAO found.

NAO head, Amyas Morse, said: ‘Mainstream schools have to make £3bn in efficiency savings by 2019/20 against a background of growing pupil numbers and a real-terms reduction in funding per pupil.

‘The department needs effective oversight arrangements that give early warning of problems and it needs to be ready to intervene quickly where problems do arise.'