Teachers and parents from Lewisham marched on parliament over fears for the funding of local schools.

Joined by Lewisham East MP Heidi Alexander, the protestors claim that 71 out of 77 schools in Lewisham face cuts.

This is on top of a recent council report that revealed half of Lewisham schools will finish the financial year 2019/20 with a deficit.

The protestors were joined by teachers from across the UK, the School Cuts coalition and the National Education Union (NEU) as they lobbied MPs about school funding in the wake of the government’s school funding formula.

Lea Bonnell, NEU spokesperson, said, “It is quite unthinkable that a Government would want our schools to be anything other than properly funded. Yet this is the position the majority of schools find themselves in.”

Kim Knappett, also from NEU, said, “Headteachers are at the end of their tether with many having to take the unprecedented step of writing home to parents to ask for money to help with the running of the school.”

However the government claims its new National Funding Formula (NFF) is a fairer system for schools and replaces a system that saw huge differences in funding between schools in different parts of the country.

The government also claims that under the new formula, no school will lose funding, and under-funded schools will see significant gains of up to 3 per cent per pupil.

Minister for school standards Nick Gibb said: “The claims being made by the trade union about school funding are fundamentally misleading. There are no cuts in funding – every school will see an increase in funding through the formula from 2018.

“The figures the trade union are peddling are based on historical data and do not reflect the situation in our schools today. They also ignore the fact that schools’ funding is driven by pupil numbers and, as pupil numbers rise, the amount of money schools receive will also increase.”