You know this funding difference between north and south....

[CurlyhairedAssassin]

....that's in the news at the moment? How has that come about? Are London schools given more per pupil to cover London weighting for staff salaries? I saw a news item tonight and it said that schools down south are able to have slightly smaller classes becUse of the extra money they get. But it got me thinking about the reasons WHY they get more money. There must be a logical one, surely. It can't just be an unfair allocation of funds?

Sussex is annoyed about this, if you scroll down the link, you'll see that the 5 most poorly-funded areas are all in the south.
West Sussex appealed and got a slap for their audacity.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-31871139

I was surprised to read your post as I've always been told that Bucks schools are amongst the most poorly funded in the country - apparently it's to do with having vast swathes of countryside and a grammar school system which means lots of secondary pupils are entitled to free transport to school. I'm quite surprised to see that Bucks isn't in the bottom 5!

Even worse (for budgets, but better for me :) ) is that teachers in a good part of Bucks are entitled to outer London fringe so the salary bill is even higher than for other areas of the country. And the slightly smaller classes thing - never come across that as I haven't had a KS1 class smaller than 30 ever - a couple of years ago it was 32.

The only places round here that have small classes and are state primaries are those tiny rural schools with around 100 pupils in total. Although sometimes you get a class of 25, but 3 year groups.
The majority are 30-32.

This WAS the local northwest news after the main news at 6 o'clock. Maybe a bit of bias going on then! Maybe northern schools just get worse results because they are worse schools, then, nothing to do with the funding.....

I worked in the NW for 8 years, in a very deprived area. It's not the schools that are shit, it's trying to turn the tide of generations of thinking that school was what you did before you went to work in the mills, or got a manufacturing job, or got married and had babies.
When I left in the '90s, the post-16 rate of staying on in education in my area was under 35%. Whereas in Sussex the rate was 75%

There is a gap and the most poorly funded LAs are mainly north of London. I work in the East Midlands and the difference in per pupil funding between a child in my school and a child in London is around £4000.

The government often bang on about average class sizes being 26 or something ridiculous, but classes round here are 30+ plus. Where do they get the average from??