A senior Tory MP has demanded that unions take down the School Cuts website after the UK statistics watchdog said it was using “misleading” figures.

Deputy Conservative Party chairman James Cleverly has written an open letter to the general secretaries of the NEU teaching union calling for them to issue an “urgent clarification”.

He accused the website, part of a union-backed campaign to push for more funding for schools, of using a “methodology which is fundamentally flawed and skewed towards generating ‘cuts’.”

School Cuts: Stats watchdog says website’s figures ‘misleading’

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“It is totally inappropriate for your website to stoke up fear among parents and children, in what I can only conclude to be a politically motivated statement,” Mr Cleverly wrote.

“In the past, when the National Education Union has made mistakes in their assessment, it has corrected the record.

“On the basis of this response from the UKSA [UK Statistics Authority] and in the interest of the public, I am writing to ask you to remove this website and your misleading claims and issue an urgent clarification.”

Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney, NEU joint general-secretaries, responded in a letter saying they have “no intention of taking down the school cuts website”.

They said they plan to meet with the UKSA’s director general next month to discuss the watchdog’s “minor concerns” and offered to do the same with Mr Cleverly, adding: “We stand by our figures.”

The Tory MP’s letter comes after UKSA chair criticised how the School Cuts site presents information on the depth and scale of school funding cuts.

In a letter responding to Mr Cleverly last month, Sir David Norgrove said the way data is used on the website risks giving a “misleading” picture of the state of UK schools.

• The biggest problem, he said, was that the figures mix past and projected budget cuts, potentially leaving out any future increases for individual schools.
• Underlying calculations mix numbers on baseline funding and per-pupil funding from 2015-16 with 2017-18 pupil numbers. “This approach,” said Sir David, “creates a worse picture where pupil numbers are increasing for a particular school”.
• The website’s headline figure that 91 per cent of schools face funding cuts covers only England, but the website suggests it also applies to Wales.

The website lists the NEU, NAHT, GMB, Unison, Unite and the Association of School and College Leaders as backers.

This is not the first time the UK Statistics Authority has had to wade into the war of words over the state of school funding.

Late last year Sir David wrote to education secretary Damian Hinds raising “serious concerns” about his department’s use of school funding statistics.