A YORK MP has welcomed the announcement of a new school funding deal which he says will bring in extra money for education in the city.

Julian Sturdy, Conservative MP for York Outer, has called confirmation of a new school funding formula “a victory for York schools”, but his Labour counterpart in York Central has said the deal will actually see funding fall.

The Department for Education confirmed last week that a new funding formula for schools would come into force from April next year, replacing what Mr Sturdy dubbed an “unfair, opaque and out of date” system that sees some areas get more than others “for no justifiable reason”.

He said: “The Secretary of State guaranteed a minimum funding rate earlier in the summer and I am delighted that this has now been confirmed and the national funding formula will be introduced from 2018.

“At times, it has felt as though our campaign might falter and there have been a number of delays and necessary tweaks. However, the latest guarantees are positive and I shall be having further discussions with head teachers and City of York Council in coming weeks.”

The reform has been a long time coming, he added, and it is pleasing to see initial proposals that would have lost money for some schools in York Outer dropped.

However, York Central representative Rachael Maskell said the deal does not go “anywhere near far enough” to help schools.

She said: “The extra money announced by the Government for the new funding formula is not new money from the Treasury but has been found by cutting existing schemes within the Department of Education.

“Since 2010 we have seen sustained cuts to our schools in York with figures from the House of Commons Library showing that when the new funding formula is implemented in full, York’s funding per pupil would still be around 6.7 per cent below the national average.”

Funding freezes since 2011 have seen class sizes grow and the number of teachers fall, Ms Maskell added.

She said: “Reallocating inadequate levels of overall funding will not resolve the funding crisis or address the historical underfunding we have had in the city.”