School Funding
Debate between Andrew Selous and Baroness Morgan of Cotes(12 years ago)
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Andrew Selous
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for illustrating a problem similar to the one in the bottom part of Bedfordshire. That adds to my argument.
Each child in central Bedfordshire receives £4,658, compared with a child in Luton who receives £5,315 and a child in Buckinghamshire who receives £4,814. A child in Luton gets £657 more and a child in wealthier Buckinghamshire, our neighbour, gets £156 more. Every political party across the spectrum in central Bedfordshire is unhappy about that. The leader of Central Bedfordshire council wrote to the Secretary of State on 25 January to express the views of the whole council on this matter.
Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) on securing this debate.
If my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) would like another example, Leicestershire is the lowest-funded local authority per pupil head in the country. One disparity between the county and neighbouring Leicester city—I am sure that hon. Members have examples of a city next door to a county—is that pupils in Leicester get £900 per head more than pupils in Leicestershire. Yet books and teachers’ salaries do not cost any more in the city than in the county.
Andrew Selous
I thank my hon. Friend for making that point powerfully, because that is my point, too.