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Schools Funding (Cornwall)

That is exactly right and it is acknowledged in the county. This has been a long-term process. I am not seeking to make a series of party political points: Labour has sought to invest in improvements to education, but has not tackled the underlying funding system, which misses the problems for small rural schools, and which it inherited from the previous Conservative Government. This is not an issue in respect of which one can say, "The Conservatives were good and the Labour party has been bad for rural communities." The Labour party has invested more in funding schools—there is no question but that that is so—and we Liberal Democrats campaigned for that and supported it. However, the structural system for funding was not designed to support smaller rural communities, particularly impoverished ones, and still does not. In 1997, the gap between the funding of Cornish schools and the national average was about £100 per pupil less each year. That gap has now widened, because the formula has remained the same even though the amounts have increased, to a shortfall of some £300 per pupil for Cornwall.