MP Daniel Zeichner demands compensation for Cambridgeshire

In the House of Commons yesterday (October 17), Mr Zeichner told colleagues Cambridgeshire schools are receiving £4.4 million less in funding than they expected to do so, due to the oversight.  

He made the case that a lot of time and energy will be required from school staff and the local authority to recalculate budgets and pointed out that Cambridgeshire already had some of the lowest funded schools/

In response, Nick Gibb, the Minister of State for Schools, stated that the error was unfortunate. He also stated that Cambridgeshire received less because much of the funding from the government was based on the level of deprivation.

Commenting after the debate, Mr Zeichner said: ‘It’s deeply disappointing that the minister won’t compensate for the extra work caused by his department’s error.

"Equally disappointing was his use of the old story that the low level of funding for Cambridgeshire schools is due to a lack of deprivation.

"Over many years successive Conservative County Councils failed to measure deprivation in the county properly, and as we can see, today’s children are still paying the price for Tory failure."

Cambridgeshire County Council has said the reduction in planned funding had “significant implications”, highlighting that the area already received some of the lowest funding per pupil in the country.

A meeting of the council’s children and young people committee, held on October 10, heard that the authority had been told it would be getting £477million in school funding for 2024/25.

However, this has now been reduced to £473million after a government error that saw the Department for Education underestimate the number of pupils in the country.

Jonathan Lewis, director of education at the county council, said: “We are working through schools budgets, we will be bringing them to you for consideration in January for final consideration, we will try to bring you a draft in November."