Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
Main Page: Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Conservative - North Cotswolds)Department Debates - View all Geoffrey Clifton-Brown's debates with the Department for Education
(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)
May I very briefly, in the two minutes available to me, pay tribute to my teachers and governing bodies in the schools in Gloucestershire, that often with very little money and at the bottom of the F40 league, achieve outstanding Ofsted results? Gloucestershire gets a dedicated schools grant of £4,200, compared with nearly £6,700 for Camden. That cannot be equitable.
We have to end this system. We should have a national funding formula with special needs and all the other factors—rurality, deprivation—taken into account, arguing up from the minimum. Unless we start somewhere and start soon with a floors and ceiling system, we are never going to get an equitable system. To enshrine the current system under a capped budget is simply unfair, and I ask the Minister to recognise that unfairness. It is quite wrong that there is a postal code lottery, so that where someone lives determines how much funding their child has. Please can he end this unfairness?