SOMERSET County Council is supporting a campaign to improve the funding of England’s schools, which campaigners say are at ‘crisis point’.
According to the School Cuts coalition of unions, who are campaigning for schools to be better funded, Frome College will have lost out on nearly three quarters of a million pounds of funding between 2015 and 2020, even if recent promises of extra cash for schools go ahead. It amounts to nearly a £200 loss of funding per pupil, per year.
Other schools in the area, including primary schools, also face a drop in funding.
The county council has also highlighted the inequality of funding across schools in England. According to the local authority, if Somerset received the national average funding per pupil, it would result in more than £10.4million of extra funding for the county’s schools.
This is despite the recent promise by Prime Minister Boris Johnson to ‘level up’ the funding of England’s schools with billions more in spending over the next three years. The School Cuts coalition says that the investment ‘falls short’ and does not ‘fully reverse the cuts suffered since 2015’.
Somerset County Council says that it supports the concerns being raised and welcomes the efforts of campaigners, teachers and parents to bring attention to it.
A spokesperson for the county council told Frome Times,“We are fully supportive of the funding issue being raised and welcome the efforts of campaigners to bring Government attention to it.
“Our headteachers, schools and pupils deserve better. Across primary and secondary schools – according to funding figures up to 2020 – if our pupils were to receive the national average funding per head (excluding London authorities), it would mean more than £10.4m of extra funding for Somerset schoolchildren.
“However, thanks to tireless lobbying of the Government by our councillors and officers, alongside campaigns such as this and the Campaign for Fairer Funding in Education, we remain optimistic we can secure an improved settlement over the course of 2020/21.”
More information about the ‘School Cuts’ coalition campaign can be found on www.schoolcuts. org.uk
