Graham Stuart MP’s campaign to provide a fairer deal for East Riding schools took another step forward last week when he met with Schools Minister David Laws. He told the Minister that the delivery of education in a sparsely populated rural area with many small primary and secondary schools was necessarily more expensive than in a compact urban setting. He told the Minister that there could be no justification for the position of the East Riding of Yorkshire as one of the lowest funded in the country.
The Minister confirmed to Graham that the Government was committed to a national funding formula which would better reflect the needs of pupils in every area and so improve the fairness of the allocations. He told Graham, however, that this would not be introduced until the next Parliament and would take time after that to come fully into effect so as to minimise disruption to those areas whose allocations would be reduced.
Graham said, “The Government is going in the right direction but not fast enough in my view. We can’t wait until the next Parliament for fairer funding of the education of young people in Withernsea, Hornsea, Beverley or Hedon. They deserve better and deserve it now. We know that it was the last government which made such a mess of it all and deliberately skewed funding to Labour voting areas but that’s no excuse for delay.
“I’ve asked the Minister to consider providing a lump sum to help lift the forty lowest funded authorities up a little to close the gap with those more generously financed. He said that he could not promise anything but would look seriously along those lines at what the Government could do in 2015/2016 ahead of the introduction of the new national funding formula.
“I will work closely with colleagues in Parliament and through the Rural Fair Share Campaign to put pressure on the Government to do something sooner. We have a year to influence the settlement for 2014/15 and let’s hope we can get something done for that. For too long rural areas have been passed over in favour of our urban neighbours. We need a Rural Fair Share and we need it now.”
