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The overall budget to fund schools in Northern Ireland has been cut for 2023-24.

The news came in a letter from the Department of Education (DE) to school governors.

Schools have also been told what their interim individual budgets will be for the new financial year.

But the DE letter said that it had not been "possible to include the funding allocated in 2022-23 to mitigate pay and energy increases" for schools.

On Thursday, the department said it was axing "holiday hunger" payments for families of over 96,000 children entitled to free school meals to save money.

The department also said it could no longer fund a mental health and counselling programme for children in primary schools called Happy Healthy Minds.

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