WEST Devon head teachers this week added their backing to a renewed campaign to get fair funding for education in Devon.

Devon schools are sixth from bottom of 152 education authorities for Government funding.

That means every pupil is worth nearly £500 less than the average child nationally.

For a 200-pupil primary school that amounts to a gap of £96,000, or three extra teachers. For a 1,000 student secondary school, the deficit is an enormous £480,000.

Nicky Pratten, headteacher at Mary Tavy and Brentor Primary School and chairman of the Tavistock Area Learning Community, is hosting a lobby meeting tomorrow (Friday), at which heads and chairs of governors from throughout West Devon and Torridge will urge MP Geoffrey Cox to put pressure on the Government regarding funding.

Mrs Pratten said: 'I would like to see how it can be justified that a child in my school gets funded less than in 94% of other schools in the country.

'We are supposed to be treating all children equally, but there are things we just can't do in Devon because of the budget shortfall — it seems we are being penalised through no fault of our own. There are so many more things we could be doing if we were funded properly.'

Helen Salmon, principal of Tavistock College, said: 'Heads in Devon feel very strongly about the fair funding issue. For example, similar-sized secondary schools' funding can vary by as much as £1,800 per pupil. For a school of Tavistock's size this could make a difference of £1.8million. This would pay for an extra 40 teachers.

'It seems grossly unfair that a child in Devon has less spent on their education than a child in Surrey.'

Daryll Chapman is the principal of Okehampton College, which recently achieved outstanding status in every area of its Ofsted report. Mr Chapman said good performance from schools in the Okehampton area was masking the shortfall in funding, and felt an increase in funding for rural schools offered exciting prospects for the future.

He said: 'Improved funding would make a huge difference to every part of a working school, to every facet of its operation. You could look at things like group sizes, offering more support services like counselling or CAMHS workers, having more favourable staff to student ratios.

'Looking at our budget, if we were to be receiving the same funding as the average secondary school — not even the top end, just the average — then Okehampton College would be between £500,000 and £600,000 better off each year. That money would make a huge difference.

'The funding disparity must be holding back some schools across the region. We have an unusual situation in Okehampton, in that both our primary school and secondary school, and schools in surrounding areas, are doing well. On the surface, that might make you think that additional funding isn't needed. Just think what we aren't able to offer now, and how much more we could be offering if we had more funding.

Education Secretary Michael Gove has promised to introduce a national funding system after the General Election.

But now Devon County Council's cabinet member for schools, Will Mumford, and the chairman of the Devon Association of Primary Heads, Martyn Boxall, are writing to Mr Gove asking him to speed up the process.

The letter to Michael Gove states: 'Devon schools already do well academically despite their poor funding. Our primary schools, particularly, do extremely well on almost any comparison with our geographic or statistical neighbours. That is a measure of the quality of the teaching, leadership and governance we have in the county.

'But imagine what more we could achieve with funding that was equal to the average, let alone similar to the higher-funded schools in the affluent South East and metropolitan authorities? For example, in one of the wealthiest parts of the country, Kensington and Chelsea, every pupil is worth nearly £2,500 more than a Devon child.

'We recognise at this time of austerity, you are unlikely to be able to allocate extra funding to schools, but we argue that it is high time for the funding cake to be sliced more equally.'