Warwick and Leamington MP James Plaskitt today welcomed the news that Warwickshire County Council’s ruling Conservative cabinet appear to have dropped form their agenda for the cabinet meeting on the 20th December their proposal to revise the formula for distributing funding to schools.

On behalf of schools in his constituency, Mr Plaskitt has been campaigning against the Council’s proposed reforms. 21 schools in Mr Plaskitt’s constituency stood to lose funding as a result of the proposal. The ten largest losers between them were facing a budget reduction totalling £300,000.

Mr Plaskitt has also criticised the proposed reforms for having no obvious rationale, and for reducing spending allocations to schools serving relatively disadvantaged areas.

Mr Plaskitt has been calling on the County Council to withdraw its proposals and to go back to the drawing board. Until today it was expected that the Conservative cabinet would make its decision this Thursday. Mr Plaskitt now understands that the item has now been withdrawn from the cabinet agenda.

Mr Plaskitt said, “Tearing up the agenda at the last minute suggests that there may be a complete rethink going on. I hope so, because the scheme as originally proposed was unacceptable to the schools in my constituency.”

Mr Plaskitt added, “If the council are rethinking this idea and planning to come back with another option, I would expect to see one that distributed funding in a fair and transparent way. On behalf of my schools I will continue to watch the county’s manoeuvring on this very closely.”