A CUT in funding means teenagers wanting to take a popular motor course run by Skidz in High Wycombe will be denied places.

Only 50, instead of the 150 last year, will be able to start the two-year course in September.

Skidz is a successful groundbreaking scheme for low-achieving children who might otherwise drop out of education. It has been copied in Aylesbury and Banbury and a similar scheme is about to start in Reading.

Steve Godfrey, who runs Skidz, is disappointed that the number of children attending Skidz will drop. He said the scheme took children of a lower academic level, many of whom would probably have dropped out of school.

"They are now employable and will contribute to the community," he said.

"Young people identified something they really wanted to do. And now there is no money to do it."

Many students at Skidz are paid for by educational group, the South Bucks 16-19 Consortium. This was set up three years ago to get money from a Government scheme, Increasing Flexibility, which made cash available so that more children could take vocational courses.

The consortium of 16 schools arranges vocational courses at Skidz, at Wycombe and Amersham College and in schools, and was allocated £200,000 a year from Increasing Flexibility.

But this turned out to be not enough for all the students wanting to take courses, so the local Learning and Skills Council (LSC), and Buckinghamshire LEA, bolstered the cash by £500,000.

Bob Digby, the consortium co-ordinator, said this had enabled 1,900 students to take part.

Now this extra money had stopped, he said. He added he was £350,000 short for September and would be out of his job at the end of this month.

Gill Webb, director of learning provision at the LSC, said the extra money given to the consortium had come from a discretionary fund of £3million which was intended for post-16 education, skills for life and to support development of skills where there were shortages, such as care services, engineering and construction.

The consortium had known a year ago that the money was being cut.

She said the LSC thought highly of Skidz, but it had been operating before the consortium was set up and received EU Social Fund money.

Schools who want to send more pupils to Skidz would have to find the cash £310 per pupil from their own budgets or get parents to pay a share.