Crawley Council Leader, Peter Lamb, has joined with over a thousand English councillors in demanding the Government act now to end the funding crisis hitting local schools.

The campaign, launched by the NEU’s Councillors Network and supported by education fair funding campaign group f40, expresses concern over the desperate state of school funding. The letter urges the Government to invest more money in schools in the forthcoming Spending Review to help meet the huge funding crisis across education, a crisis resulting in growing budget deficits, cuts in teaching staff, a reduction in subject areas, and a poorer education for children.

In Crawley, figures show twenty-nine out of thirty-two local schools are significantly worse-off per pupil than they were only four years ago, with Broadfield Primary alone having a funding shortfall of over half a million pounds.

Despite the huge efforts of our hard-working teachers, every pound lost from schools is a reduction in the investment in our children and jeopardises the UK’s ability to compete on the global stage.

Cllr Peter Lamb, Leader of Crawley Borough Council, said:

“We have repeatedly been told that the Conservative Government would fix the underfunding of Crawley’s schools and yet the figures prove just the opposite. In truth the funding situation in our local primaries and secondaries have never been worse. We must have an end to all the broken promises and a return of the funding local schools need to give Crawley’s next generation the chance they deserve.”