Paddy Tipping demands more primary school funding

One of Paddy Tipping's more recent Commons appearances was to enquire of Maria Eagle, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Education:

What the spending per primary school pupil was in (a) Nottinghamshire and (b) England in 2004–05.

A question he clearly already knew the answer to - £3,210 compared to a national average of £3,560. Paddy Tipping followed up with

Spending on primary schools in Nottinghamshire has doubled under this Government, but the figures show that Nottinghamshire is seriously disadvantaged against the national norm—out of 150 local authorities, it is the 129th worst funded. A new funding formula is being put together, so what hope is there for children in Nottinghamshire of a better, fairer and more equitable system from 1 April next year?

According to Maria Eagle MP, the consultation is complete, and a decision will be made soon.

Primary school funding is not something I know much about at all, but I would note that over half of Nottingham pupils went on to fail to get 5 or more GCSE grade Cs or above, so there is an awful lot of room for improvement in the educational system. You can see Nottinghamshire primary school results here, on the BBC site. However, it's difficult to gauge the value of this, because you can't separate the value of the teaching from the raw material that they get to work with.

About time for an update

Apologies for not updating more often, but I'm very busy at the moment both at work and at home (I'm moving house - still in the Sherwood constituency!), so it's hard to make room for everything. Posting generally takes a bit of background reading, rather than writing the first thing that comes into my head, so it can take quite a while to put one together. Anyway, I mean to keep this going, so hopefully more normal service will be resumed soon.