Cuts in government grants are being blamed by county education chiefs for a forecast £23.8m overspend for looking after pupils with ‘high needs’.

Kent County Council leader Paul Carter said the authority had in the last four years been forced to transfer £28m from schools to cover the shortfall.

He warned that school budgets were on a cliff edge if more money was not provided to pay for the support needed by children with special needs.

According to schools and council leaders, the pressure on budgets is a consequence of a £600m cut to education grants that used to cover the bulk of the costs.

Pupils with high needs are those with special needs or disabilities.

According to the most recent figures, there are 8,457 children with special needs statements in the county - 451 more than the previous year. Of these, 1,445 are in maintained schools and 3,491 in special schools.

Thanet schools and colleges have the highest concentration, with 1,206.

But that figure is even higher when the number of pupils who have what are known as education, health and care plans are added. These plans are replacing the system under which SEN children are statemented.

Around 2,500 children have such plans and the forecast is for that to rise to more than 3,000 by 2020.

Mr Carter said councils were under growing pressure because of an increasing school population, along with a rise in children diagnosed with autism and other conditions.

“Schools have had to make significant sufficiency savings already to sustain anymore would materially affect the education of the pupils in their schools. We are on a cliff edge right now,” he said.

In a letter to the education secretary Damien Hinds, Mr Carter says: “It is regrettable that councils are only able to properly provide support to children with special education needs by instead using funding that was intended for a different group of children. I am sure that you will agree that this is not a desirable or sustainable position.”

Alan Brookes, the head teacher of Fulston Manor School in Sittingbourne, said: “It is very difficult to see how you can construct a solution when the numbers are predicted to rise by so much and there is no additional money going in.”

“It is partly to do with population growth but also because of the number of parents applying independently for education, health and care plans.”

“And there is a real problem with finding enough psychologists to make assessments. There is also a real problem when you have children from Kent but who cannot be allocated a place in Kent.”

The Department for Education said in a statement: “The high needs budget for pupils with special educational needs is £6 billion this year – the highest on record. Thanks to the additional £1.3 billion funding announced last year, every local authority will see an increase in their high needs funding over the next two years.”