Labour MP for High Peak, Ruth George, has come under fire for using ‘misleading’ figures on local school funding.

Last week, Ms George made the claim that High Peak schools were “seeing £1.7m cuts a year” in her response to the Chancellor’s Spring Statement on the UK economy.

Ms George’s figure, which appears to be taken from the discredited School Cuts website, is demonstrably false. The website is run by the School Cuts Coalition who have recently admitted they got their sums wrong as they failed to factor in £450million of funding into their calculations.

The trade union backed organisation was heavily criticised earlier this year by the independent UK Statistics Authority who described the website as “misleading” and noted a number of flaws in its methodology and calculations. The website is riddled with further inaccuracies, including getting many local schools names wrong.

The latest block funding figures provided by Derbyshire County Council actually show that school funding in the High Peak will increase next year from £50.7million to £52.1million, with average per pupil funding increasing from £4,452 to £4,524 per pupil. Factoring in inflation, the real terms increase in the block funding budget in the High Peak is £505,644.

There are also further increases in funding when factoring in money provided in addition to the block grant, such as the Pupil Premium and Special Educational Needs top-up funding.

High Peak Conservative Candidate Robert Largan commented:

“Nobody is denying that our schools have faced an incredibly tough few years when it comes to funding. I will always fight for more money for our schools and I’m working with the County Council to lobby for a fairer national funding formula.

“But these efforts are being undermined by this scaremongering, which make it much harder for us to get a fair hearing in Whitehall.”

Alex Dale, Derbyshire County Councillor & Cabinet Member for Young People, commented:

“Instead of misleading parents and talking down our schools, High Peak needs an MP who will work with us lobbying the Government to go even further in addressing some of the historic inequalities in the school funding system.

“Unfortunately, Ruth George appears more interested in political point scoring. High Peak deserves better.”