WHILE welcoming any addtional real terms funding which comes into our county's schools, I must point out to parents that while a 6.7 per cent increase looks good on paper, in reality, how good it is depends on the original amount of funding it was applied to in the first place.

If we have had a 50 per cent increase since 1997, as Jacqui Smith MP claims, and are still managing to rank bottom eigth out of 150 LEAs in the country, it just goes to show how appalling our funding situation is and has been.

Fifty percent (or 6.7 per cent) of peanuts is still peanuts, after all.

Any increase Ms Smith claims we have had is somewhat spectacularly eradicated by the stark relegation of each child in Worcestershire against the equivalent national average payment (83 per cent relegation), the Birmingham payment (121 per cent relegation) and the Herefordshire payment (92 per cent relegation) since 1998-99 alone.

Ms Smith and her department of education promised me a written response concerning this very matter, in which I asked her to confirm these figures as correct, and which was supposed to be delivered to me by no later than her own stated deadline of December 16. I'm still waiting.

Far from "Jacqui's joy", as was reported, a far more suitable headline would have been a continuation of the saga of "Worcestershire's woes".

HELEN DONOVAN

St Margaret's Road

Evesham