Universal free meals for infants should be scrapped to ease the “undue” funding pressures facing schools, a Conservative backbencher has suggested.

Anne Main argued her party’s decision to drop its 2017 general election manifesto commitment to scrap the universal meals was “misguided”, and said the Tories “should have investigated that further”.

Speaking during her Westminster Hall debate on school funding, she said: “Just like I don’t want to see any budgets that should be used for pupils who are at the poorest end of the margins taken away, I don’t want to see wealthier parents being cross-subsidised when they don’t need it.”

‘Crazy’ to ring-fence huge sums

The St Albans MP added that it was “crazy” to ring-fence “huge sums of money for foreign aid” when the education budget lacked funding and called for lawmakers to debate the topic.

“I’m a great supporter of good aid projects that have been done across the world, but it seems crazy to me that we ring-fence huge sums of money for foreign aid when vital public services such as our education budget lack funding,” Ms Main said.

“The aid budget should be under the same scrutiny and pressures as other departments’ budgets because effectively we’re shovelling money out the door to meet arbitrary targets set in law.”

Ms Main said it did not seem right that more and more schools were “having to go cap in hand” to parents for even the most basic provisions such as textbooks.

She warned schools were not were “not feeling the effects” of “record” levels of funding and headteachers were struggling to meet the “ever-rising costs and additional financial burdens” being placed upon them, such as bigger National Insurance contributions.

Call for ‘greater clarity’

Fellow Conservative and former education minister Tim Loughton spoke of a “sense of déjà vu” as he called for “greater clarity” over real-terms funding.

He warned staffing costs in some schools in his constituency had reached 90 per cent of their budgets, becoming “unsustainable”.

The MP for East Worthing and Shoreham said counselling levels had fallen due to cutbacks, adding: ”[This is] not scaremongering, this is going on now.”

Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran cautioned that the breadth of the curriculum was being pared down owing to a lack of funding.

Shadow schools minister Mike Kane urged ministers to “remove their heads from the sand”. 

He added: “The £1.3 billion additional funding announced by the secretary of state is nowhere near enough to reverse the £2.8 billion that has been cut since 2015.”

‘Offering opportunity to everyone’

Schools minister Nick Gibb said the new national funding formula meant that for the first time, this year cash was distributed to local authorities based on the individual needs and characteristics of every school in the country.

The “historic reform” was the “biggest improvement to school funding for a decade and it was “directing resources where they are needed most”, he said.

Mr Gibb said: “We are determined to create an education system that offers opportunity to everyone, no matter what their circumstances or where they live.

“And that’s why we have delivered on our promise to reform the unfair opaque and outdated school funding system by introducing the national funding formula for schools, something that previous governments have shied away from - including the previous Labour government.”