Schools dominated events this week.

Written by David Heath MP and published in Western Gazette on Thu 4th Feb 2010

I've had a very schools-centred week. Last Friday I went along to Huish Episcopi school, along with Paddy Ashdown, to meet fifth form students. Brilliant questions, and Paddy was, I thought, on top form, especially when asked about his multiple former lives as soldier, spy, diplomat, youth leader, MP and, latterly, King of Bosnia! I hope the students felt that they got as much out of it as they should have done. It was also good to see the new buildings taking shape, and I'm glad we managed to persuade the Learning and Skills Council before they went into a state of utter shambles, which has meant getting any commitment over the last year has been a herculean task.

Then I dropped in to Horsington Church of England Primary School to hand out some certificates, and hear about their future plans; that was a visit I was due to make a couple of weeks ago, but at the time I couldn't get out of my own village because of the snow, and if I had it wouldn't have helped because the road to Horsington wasn't useable so the school was closed anyway. And on Tuesday of this week I had a group from Selwood School visiting the Houses of Parliament and asking me questions about life as an MP and areas of policy, questions which wouldn't have disgraced an adult audience.

What is always amazing about schoolchildren asking questions is the sophistication and interest they show, and the refreshing refusal to accept a glib or a fudged response. So we covered whether I thought taxes were too high (yes, I did, at least for people on the lower end of the income scale), whether we were doing enough to combat climate change (no, neither locally, nationally or, most importantly, internationally), and whether the scandals of MPs expenses and the like will make people less likely to vote (sadly, probably true, although the right response ought to be a steely determination to support those committed to putting things right).

Another pupil asked me if I thought we needed to spend more on schools. Yes, I think we should, and I think there is expenditure within the education budget which ought to be going towards supporting schools rather than new tiers of bureaucracy, for instance. But I also think schools funding should be distributed more fairly. We should be very proud of the performance of Somerset schools. In general they do an excellent job, and all credit to the dedicated staff who make that happen, along with the volunteers who make up the governing bodies and give an enormous amount of time and effort in that role.

But however much we do that is good, I cannot ever forget that Somerset loses out from a schools funding system which is basically unfair. It's been like that for decades now, and it really is time for it to change. The reality is that every pupil in a Somerset school is funded per head several hundred pounds each year less than the national average, and thousands of pounds less than some leafy London suburbs. That strikes me as a basically unfair system.

The problem is the formula which is used, which rewards areas which are determined to have higher levels of deprivation. Some of that is justified. Clearly, it does cost more to educate children for whom English is not their first language, for instance. And children from very poor backgrounds may need special assistance which is expensive. But the problem with the formula at the moment is that it doesn't take into account that you can have individual children who need extra help in any environment. Just because Somerset is considered a "comfortable" place to live doesn't mean that everything in our schools is rosy, but that's the assumption which is implicit in the way the system works.

And that unfairness actually goes further, because there are costs in a rural area like Somerset which are not reflected at all in government grant. The costs of school transport, for instance, which are substantial when many children live more than the statutory limit from the school they attend. Or the costs of maintaining a large number of smaller schools. I am a great believer in village schools, but their unit costs are much higher than bigger schools. And the fact that so many of our school buildings are elderly, to say the least. The last few years have seen some welcome investment in permanent buildings, but we still have a lot of buildings which are old, often Victorian, and have higher running costs, some buildings from the seventies which have simply deteriorated, and temporary buildings to accommodate higher numbers on roll.

Surely it would be better to fund schools on the basis of need. To provide a premium for each pupil that has higher than average requirements so that the money follows the child, and each school, no matter where it is situated in the country, has a guarantee of funding for the mix of children at the school. To do that properly, you need to inject new money into the system, and that's not easy in the current climate. But there is money in the education budget, it's just not getting through to schools. It's possible to identify over two billion pounds which could be redirected to schools funding without making any further call on the taxpayer. An extra £90,000 a year for a primary school or £400,000 for a secondary school would make a huge difference. And it would be fair, to those who need help in rural areas as well as those in London or the big cities.