THIS year Warrington schools have had another strong set of results at both GCSE and A-level, comfortably exceeding national averages. Some schools have made startling improvements in the outcomes that their students achieve. In the previous academic year, our town was the second most improved and the fourth highest achieving local authority in the north west.

It is grossly unfair, however, that our schools are labouring under a national funding system that is not fit for purpose. There is a massive £2,000 discrepancy between the allocation per pupil in the highest and least well funded areas. In effect it is a postcode lottery and as the Warrington Guardian has previously reported, in 2015/16 children here got the 10th lowest amount of basic funding per pupil in the whole country. For comparison, each young person in Halton and Knowsley was allocated about £600 more and £800 extra if they lived in Manchester or Liverpool.

Educationalists were hoping that after a 20-year campaign, a new national formula would be introduced in 2017. Regrettably Theresa May’s government has now postponed this until 2018/19. It is to be hoped that they do not now try to kick fair funding into the long grass.

It seems that one of the earliest ideas coming from Mrs May’s administration is to introduce even more inequality into the system through an expansion of grammar schools, to add to their ongoing preferential treatment of London and the leafy home counties. Each of our children surely deserves far better. I believe that many local schools are making heroic efforts despite dramatically dwindling budgets; year on year this underfunding from national government compounds their problems.

I would encourage everyone who values the life chances of our children to contact their MP asking them to bring renewed attention to this injustice at a parliamentary level.

REBECCA KNOWLES Labour councillor representing Chapelford and Old Hall