WORCESTER MP Robin Walker has joined over 50 parliamentarians in writing to the education secretary to lobby for fairer school funding.

Mr Walker has backed long-awaited plans for a new funding formula, due in 2015, and called for consultations over it to start “as soon as possible”.

It follows the news this week that Worcestershire County Council has backed a motion asking Michael Gove for more funding towards education.

Average overall spending per pupil is £5,100 in Worcestershire, £1,333 lower than that in Birmingham, and 145th in a national league table of 151 education authorities.

The Department for Education now says the consultation with schools is expected to get underway by the end of this year.

Mr Walker said: “I am passionate about securing fairer funding for local schools.

“The education secretary has been right to make a new formula a priority and I welcome the fact that he has already committed hard won resource from the spending review to deliver the new system.

“I look forward to local schools being able to feed into the consultation later this year.”

The county council last week approved a motion calling Worcestershire's school funding predicament "unjustifiable".

Politicians are hoping that by reiterating their concerns now, they will steal a march on other poorly-funded areas and put the county at the forefront of Mr Gove's mind.

At the moment school funding is allocated on a long list of factors, taking into account deprivation, number of pupils with English as a second language, prosperity, and much more.

The county council is attempting to get the Government to distribute more funds straight to town halls, so an in-house set of calculations can decide which school gets what.