Last Friday I had the privilege to visit Longcause School in Plympton and to meet with Headteacher, Anne Thorne. This local school serves children and young people from across the Plymouth area who have special educational needs, particularly those on the autism spectrum.
I'm passionate about ensuring children and young people across my constituency have access to the education they need, specially suited to their learning needs. I am involved on a national level with fighting for fairer funding for schools and especially for special educational needs. As such, I have recently become Vice Chair of the F40 Campaign for Fairer Funding in Education.
As I said in July, it was an honour to have been invited to become the Conservative Vice Chair of the F40 group. Fair funding for schools is one of my main interests and I am determined to see improvements made to the new national funding formula launched by the government this financial year.
Whilst welcoming the fact that we have now moved to a national funding formula and acknowledging the extra £1.3 billion of funding made available to schools, I share f40’s continuing concerns about the new formula and remaining locked-in inequalities. There is unanimous recognition among f40 member authorities and many MPs that there is still more work to do to tackle the continuing unfairness within the system and I hope that I can play a constructive part in achieving further beneficial change.