THE best Worcestershire's cash-strapped schools can hope for from the Government's education funding review is an extra £3.9m - £56 per pupil - it has emerged.

Campaigners claim the figure is half the sum needed to bring the county up to the national average.

But they have a fight on their hands to even secure this deal.

If the remaining three funding options under consideration by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister had been in place last year, Worcestershire County Council would still not have gained any extra cash compared to its actual budget.

"We're already one of the worst-funded authorities in the country, so all three of these options must be wrong," said Mid-Worcestershire MP Peter Luff.

"Teachers and parents will greet this news with great dismay and I'm going to look closely at these formulas to see if I can come up with an alternative."

Worcestershire has long argued for extra money. But the cases made by authorities in poorer, northern towns and cities appear to have proved more compelling.

The new formulas place heavy weighting on factors such as deprivation and, as a result, the changes are likely to direct money away from wealthier counties with relatively high costs of living.

Shire counties would have faced big cuts to last year's budgets under three of the options.

Only Option Two bucks this trend with the prospect of the 1.1

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From P1 / n per cent increase - £3.9m - to Worcestershire's £368.7m budget, and Worcester MP Mike Foster argues it should be grabbed with both hands.

"We've argued for years now that Hertfordshire, for example, gets more than Worcestershire and that's unfair," said Mr Foster, a parliamentary aide in the education department.

"Option Two, which gives us more money, also takes some away from Hertfordshire. We must now establish cross-party support for this option."

The council will not actually see its budget slashed if one of the three least favourable options is selected and introduced.

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