Schools across Sussex will be given almost £5 million from the Government to help prevent a cash crisis.

Schools minister David Miliband set out increases in funding yesterday with the aim of avoiding a repeat of last year's problems, when some headteachers said they would be forced to cut staff because of tight budgets.

Last year, local education authorities (LEAs) in Sussex received some of the worst Government settlements in the country and education budgets had to be tightened.

Some schools had to set deficits of hundreds of thousands of pounds and at one point secondary heads in Brighton and Hove threatened to reject their budgets entirely, saying they were unworkable.

Brighton and Hove is among a third of LEAs being given additional top-up grants to ensure "stability" in schools as they implement the teachers' workload agreement.

The agreement, which comes into force in September, will guarantee teachers preparation time outside the classroom but will increase the financial burden on schools.

Brighton and Hove will receive £745,000, West Sussex £2,473,000 and East Sussex £1,606,000.

Brighton and Hove City Council said the grant would help ease some of its education budget difficulties but not all of them.

A spokesman for the education department said: "We very much welcome the news.

"The grant has helped this year to meet school deficits following last year's problems.

"We have already identified some further problems for 2005/06 but the allocated sum will go a long way towards covering these.

"We may still need to focus extra resources on the primary sector."

The cash is in addition to Mr Miliband's minimum guaranteed funding increase for schools in 2005/06, which he set at four per cent per pupil for secondary schools and five per cent per pupil for primary and nursery schools, where pupil numbers remain the same.