Are schools in community assisted areas better as they receive all the funding?

[bacon]

My very ordinary local primary school is asking for massive fund raising to buy equipment that is desperately needed and its a decent amount. Like many schools it has no money, It relies on the endless hardwork of the PTA to keep the cog going on the fund raising and seeing its only a small junior there isnt a huge amount raised at one time. As you would expect its the usual group that put the hardwork in. But down the road is a couple of 'Deprived areas' which receive additional excellent funding from the government but there are plenty of non deprived areas around that feed into these schools. One in particular doesnt have a fund raising team and seems to have everything - they go without nothing. They also have graded well in the recent report. Seem to have very good staffing & excellent TAs. Perhaps this would explain this grading???

Am I wrong then in assuming that perhaps I should of chose this school over my current one. I have been told that I cant receive extra funding for my child as there isnt any money to help him and things are slipping badly. If I take him out of this school and put him in this other one than I'll get the help, albeit its much more of a drive.

Surely, this is unfair practice to expect parents to fund all these essentials (even photo copier paper) in school while other schools get it for nothing. I cant quite get my head around this.

[titchy]

Maybe your school is crap at managing its budget? Maybe they have lots of teachers on higher salaries?

Whilst it's true that children on FSM do attract some money for their school, it has to be spend on narrowing the attainment gap for such kids. Not for equipment or photocopy paper.

Funding is otherwise on a per pupil basis, and although some LEAs are better funded, there are moves to unify per pupil funding nationally.