The Government has announced that it will be making state-funded schools exempt from its carbon tax scheme from 2014.

Last month Oxfordshire County Council said it would pass on the cost of the Carbon Reduction Commitment energy efficiency scheme to individual schools.

Schools would have had to pay a total of £711,000.

But the Department of Energy and Climate Change has announced that as part of reforms of the tax, councils will not be able to pass on the bill to schools.