HEAD teachers across Teignbridge have joined thousands of colleagues throughout the UK in a national protest against a Government squeeze on education funding.

They have endorsed a protest letter handed to Chancellor Phil Hammond this week demanding extra cash as they struggle to give pupils a properly financed school career.

Some 5,000 ‘short-changed’ head teachers have expressed their dismay in a detailed letter outlining their grievances over the universally derided national funding formula, the shortcomings of which have been pointedly exposed in Devon.

Among those backing the sentiments of the letter have been Ashburton’s South Dartmoor Community College head Hugh Bellamy and the executive principal of education South West based at Coombeshead Academy, Matthew Shanks, who between them look after the interests of nearly 3,000 pupils.

Mr Shanks was one of six heads who personally delivered the letter at 11 Downing Street on Tuesday.

Speaking on behalf of the Devon Secondary Association of Headteachers, Mr Shanks told the Mid-Devon Advertiser after his Whitehall call: ‘We are standing together on this matter. It is affecting all schools.’

He argued: ‘A child in Devon does not receive the same for their education from this Government as children in other parts of the country.

‘The letter to Mr Hammond was to raise this important point once again. Parents are not happy with the lack of funding in their children’s schools. Other countries invest in education to make them great - not cut it.’

The letter, presented just a week before the Chancellor’s next Budget, dismissed Government claims that the regional discrepancies in the ‘postcode funding lottery’ had been resolved.

‘Sadly, this is entirely inaccurate,’ the heads barked back in their lengthy missive of moans to Downing Street.

They highlighted the disparity in Devon where the average funded primary school of 400 pupils receives £407,200 less than the equivalent school in Greenwich.

Damaging fallout from a dwindling public purse has resulted in 90 teaching assistants and 50 teachers losing their jobs in the county over the last year.

The rot has deepened with option choices at GCSE level being cut alongside £1 million on information technology.

Some schools in Devon axed a string of enrichment courses and transport support schemes.

It has been estimated that secondary schools in the provinces get 60 per cent less funding than others of similar size in inner cities.

Heads are insisting that the Government’s £1.3 billion extra cash from 2015 to 2020 was bogus.

It was not new money – merely a reduction of original cuts from £3 billion to £1.7 billion.

Schools struggling to make ends meet were not competing on a level playing field, but on ‘a near-vertical slope’, the heads complain.

And if the mis-match on funding continues, they fear making yet more drastic staff and curriculum cuts while class sizes balloon.

They signed off their letter: ‘Never before has such a relatively small investment in our country’s children seemed so important’.