Nuneaton’s voice in Parliament, Marcus Jones, spoke yesterday in the House of Commons in support for fairer schools funding for Nuneaton children.

The debate took place as part of a long campaign to improve school funding in shire areas like Warwickshire, who have been badly funded for several decades.

Marcus raised the concern that youngsters in schools in city areas like Coventry, Birmingham and Leicester get hundreds of pounds more per pupil each year than is spent on children in Nuneaton.

The campaign, supported by many of Marcus’ fellow MPs, has already seen success with Nuneaton schools now set to receive an extra £223.08 per pupil in the coming school year than they did before, as a result of the Government investing a further £400 million. Despite this improvement in funding, Marcus wants this year’s increase to be built into future education budgets and wants to see the funding gap closed further.

Marcus believes it is unacceptable that a child living in Birmingham gets over £900 per year more spent on their education than a child living in Nuneaton. Pupils in Coventry receive £500 more and nearly £400 more in Leicester. He is particularly concerned that Nuneaton schools trying to attract the best teachers find it difficult to compete with local city areas for teaching staff.

Commenting, Nuneaton’s MP said: “This disparity has existed for several decades and was made worse by the last Labour Government. The current Conservative led Government have gone some way to start closing the gap, but I think we need to go further.

“Why should children in Nuneaton, Arley and Hartshill not get exactly the same spent on their education than in other areas? These figures show what an outstanding job our head teachers and teachers do. I think we could do even better if we had the same levels of funding.”