FIVE secondary head teachers have united to demand fairer Government funding for Somerset’s schools.

They fear students are suffering due to postcode discrimination as the county is among the worst funded in the country.

The Department for Education allocates £5,250 for every Somerset pupil aged five to 16, under half the £12,159 in the City of London area.

Only 13 of the 150 local education authorities get less than Somerset.

The heads – Paul Scutt (Bishop Fox’s), Peter Hoare (Heathfield), Sarah Watson (The Castle), Mark Trusson (Taunton Academy) and Mark Griffin (Kingsmead, Wiveliscombe) – say it is “scandalous”.

They want the Government to establish a fairer national funding formula.

In a joint statement they said: “Currently, Somerset schools are amongst the worst funded in the country.

“Consequently, secondary school students in Somerset are likely to suffer from larger class sizes, fewer support staff and inferior facilities compared with students in other authorities.

“Our argument is that the quality of education should not be a function of postcode.”

Each LEA receives a Dedicated Schools Grant from the Government, comprising a schools block, an early years block and a high needs block.

LEAs then devolve the money to schools depending on pupil numbers, their age, school type and a sparsity factor for rural schools.

The heads said: “The overall DSG varies between authorities due to replication of historic spending patterns, the absence of a rationale for the allocation of early years and high needs allocations and the introduction of the minimum funding guarantee.”

The system also results in disadvantaged students in Somerset being funded well below the level of affluent students in better funded authorities.

The heads, along with colleagues in the f40 groups of poorer funded LEAs, is calling for a “proper formula” to distribute the cash implemented over three years starting in 2016.

They also want all school funding to be distributed through a single stream, with no specific grants and incorporating the pupil premium, while the DSG should depend “on the basis of local need”.

The heads added: “It is in many ways scandalous that the provision for children educated in Somerset is undermined by a system which funds children in vastly different ways according to where they live.”