Schools plan to take funding plea direct to Downing Street

A letter was sent to West Sussex parents today (Tuesday September 27) from headteachers across the county, laying out the severity of the ongoing education funding crisis and detailing the action they were being forced to consider.

Described as “radical considerations”, that action was:

l Modifying school opening hours.

l Increasing teacher to pupil ratios again.

l Reducing basic services such as cleaning and site and premises work.

l Stopping any investment in books and IT equipment.

l Designing curriculum offers that fulfil only basic requirements.

l Not replacing staff who leave.

The letter told parents the considerations were “the very last thing that any school wishes to do” but that headteachers had been given “no option”.

This year, West Sussex children received £44million less than the national average and £200million less than the average London borough – figures that had a “crippling effect” on the county’s schools.

Last year, every head in the county signed up to the Worth Less? campaign for fairer funding – so named because they wanted to know why West Sussex children were ‘worth less’ to the government than those in other local authorities.

Parents gave their full support to the campaign, with its Facebook page earning 13,000 likes.

Now the schools are asking for a renewed surge of support to get that number up to at least 20,000.

The letter said: “If we can get huge numbers to like our campaign then we can deliver the message, with your children, to 10 Downing Street over the next two to three weeks.”

The plan is to take a couple of children from each school to deliver that message directly to the Prime Minister’s front door.

The letter continued: “We all hope that, with support from politicians, the message will finally get through and appropriate action will be taken.

“We believe that we are ‘one click for fairness’.”

To support the campaign, log on to the Worth Less? Facebook page and like the ‘£20 million transitional funding’ image.

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