Cambs schools disgracefully underfunded

Published: 3:39 PM December 16, 2009 Updated: 4:19 PM November 1, 2020

IT is a great pity to see events unfolding at St Neots Community College in the way they appear to be. The head teacher, staff and students continue to work incredibly hard, and results this year were up about five per cent on last year. The impression is

IT is a great pity to see events unfolding at St Neots Community College in the way they appear to be. The head teacher, staff and students continue to work incredibly hard, and results this year were up about five per cent on last year. The impression is given through the media that they are not being given a chance.

The major problem they are working with is a massive budget deficit, the reasons for which are varied. St Neots Community College is not the first school in this area to be working with a deficit budget and it will certainly not be the last to feel this financial pressure.

It is a fact that schools in this local authority are underfunded in comparison with schools everywhere else in the country and have been for many years, compounding the problem.

Young people in other LAs have as much as one and half times the amount more money spent on their education by Government than young people in this county. This is a situation that goes back to the early 1980s and it is a disgrace that our children in Cambridgeshire are being disadvantaged in this way.

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Our local MPs and our national Governments have consistently failed to resolve this problem despite repeated requests from the leaders of our schools to do so.

Surely, if St Neots Community College was treated fairly in comparison to schools on the other side of the A1, the budget deficit could be dealt with and the team at the school could continue with the hard work and the raising of achievement which at the moment seems to go unrecognised.