County chiefs have hailed the Government's decision to provide an extra £250.9m for shire areas to address an historical under-funding imbalance.
The reaction follows last week's announcement by the Department for Education of a £350m funding boost to schools in the least fairly funded local authorities in the country from 2015/16.
According to schools minister David Laws, a school in Birmingham with only 3% of pupils receiving free school meals (FSM) gets more funding per-head than a school in neighbouring Shropshire where more than 30% of pupils are FSM eligible.
Around four in 10 areas are set to benefit from the move towards a national funding formula contained in a ‘Consultation on Fairer Schools Funding in 2015'.
Under the proposals, every local authority would receive a minimum funding level for every pupil and every school.
According to officials, the top 15 gainers are likely to be: Bromley, Cambridgeshire, Brent, Sutton, Northumberland, South Gloucestershire, Shropshire, Merton, Croydon, Bournemouth, Buckinghamshire, Cheshire West and Chester, Leicestershire, Warwickshire and Devon.
Cllr Jane Scott, children and young people's spokesman for the County Councils Network said while the Government have yet to announce their long-awaited consultation on a national funding formula, the news showed ministers had heeded the network's long-standing concerns that county schools were underfunded compared to other areas.
‘The indicative allocation of £250.9m for 29 CCN members, including £5.4m for my own authority of Wiltshire, is an important step towards redressing this historical imbalance,' said Cllr Scott'.
She said it was important that the funding allocation was ‘new money' as pledged by Mr Laws, and that no local authority would lose out as a result of the change.
Cllr Ivan Ould, chair of the F40 campaign group which represents local authorities with the poorest funded schools in England said: ‘The additional funding is seen as a down-payment, or first step towards a new and fairer allocation system.'
