School Funding
Debate between Andrew Selous and Jeremy Lefroy(11 years, 12 months ago)
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Andrew Selous
I thank my hon. Friend for making that point powerfully, because that is my point, too.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) on securing this debate.
The point that my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) made about teachers’ salaries is vital, because those constitute, as all hon. Members who have been school governors know, the vast majority of a school’s budget. I am not in favour of differential salaries throughout the country. We need standard salaries. It is all the more important that schools funding should be fair, per head, because those basic costs should be the same throughout the country.
Andrew Selous
I thank my hon. Friend for speaking with passion and for further illustrating the point, which all hon. Members are making.
Some hon. Members have already mentioned that relatively wealthy areas often have significant pockets of deprivation. That is true in my constituency. There is deprivation in Houghton Regis, for example. The indices of multiple deprivation in some wards in that town are not dissimilar to those in much higher-funded Luton next door. The formula fails poorer children in wealthier areas. We need to look at that to see whether the formula could drill down and give additional funding for poorer children in slightly wealthier areas.