THE PRINCIPAL of Maldon’s academy will be joining others from across the country in Parliament Square tomorrow over funding and recruitment concerns.

Plume Academy principal Carl Wakefield is set to join a thousand other headteachers from around England outside Downing Street in support of the campaign group Worth Less?.

The group believe schools in England are “fundamentally hamstrung” by a lack of funding and a “chronic” shortage of teachers and support staff.

The group claims that despite a newly introduced National Funding Formula, the Treasury and Department for Education has failed to meaningfully address these issues.

Worth Less? has been campaigning for three years for the Department of Education to help them, but feel they have reached a stage where it must now take action, believing the department has largely ignored their requests.

The group will congregate at Parliament Square at 11am tomorrow before proceeding to Downing Street at midday, calling for a reversal on cuts made over the last eight years, an immediate £400 million cash injection to support the beleaguered SEND/High Needs Block and an improvement of real term per pupil funding for the post 16 education sector.

In August this year, the independent Education Policy Institute stated that schools in many parts of England face a severe “shortage of teachers”.