Education inequality of funding continues north south divide

[LottieMary]

I had no idea until I read a recent thread that children in London get free school meals

It is so so frustrating that London continues to have massive investment while regions including large parts of the north and coastal areas struggle more than ever

why isn’t funding spread more according to need? And I suppose I include myself to an extent as my child in ks1 gets a meal but I could afford to contribute, not on a low income.

When you go to London, the funding difference is so obvious everywhere. It's not just schools, though schools get loads more money, but it's transport, public services of all kinds, public goods like parks and museums, literally just the roads you walk on.

They are living in a completely different country to the rest of us and because most of them never go anywhere else, because they holiday abroad, they don't really know this. (And they don't at all care.)

So many of the people I know in London vaguely think of the rest of the country as either, like, the 1980s because that's the last time they went there, or as some kind of orc-filled Mordor filled with flag waving skinheads. They have no conception of the regional inequality (wait for someone to talk about poverty in London which will happen immediately after I make this comment) or of the political disaster it is fomenting.

But yes, every year, we spend around £2400 more on a person in London than we do on a person in Yorkshire.

www.gov.uk/government/statistics/country-and-regional-analysis-2025/country-and-regional-analysis-november-2025#:~:text=%C2%A313%2C504-,Spend%20per%20head%20(%C2%A3)

There's quite a lot of the South that isn't London and doesn't receive the same funding. It's more of a London and the rest of the country really, rather than simply North South.

Nobody but you made a North South distinction.

Oh, Hiddeninthetrees, I take that back! The title makes this distinction! I got into the habit of ignoring titles since they started being written by AI and have clearly gone totally title blind.