A regional daily has launched a campaign calling for the end to unfair funding of schools in its county.

The Cambridge News started its Fair Deal For Our Schools campaign to call on the government to ensure schools in Cambridgeshire receive the same funding as the English average.

It launched the initiative to demand that action is taken immediately because the county will soon become the worst-funded area for schools in the whole country.

The campaign was launched as Schools Minister David Laws visited the county and met headteachers, who argued their case for a better deal.

The News says that if Cambridgeshire was given the average basic funding rate per pupil, it would have an extra £44m to spend on pupils each year, which is an extra £600 per student.

Editor Paul Brackley said: “It cannot be right for our schools to receive this funding settlement and for our pupils to be disadvantaged in this way. It’s time for a fair deal.”

Extra cash could fund hundreds more teachers and allow schools to invest in new technology and equipment, rather than facing difficult decisions over redundancies.

The paper’s campaign has been backed by headteachers across the county and Cambridge MP Julian Huppert, who raised the issue in Parliament last month.

The county’s standing in the GCSE league tables has also been in decline in recent years – from 38th in 2011 to 94th this year.

Cllr David Harty, Cambridgeshire County Council’s cabinet member for learning, said: “Cambridgeshire is now bottom of the funding table – no other authority receives less per pupil than we do.

“This is clearly unfair, but more importantly, it has a detrimental effect on our schools and on the way that they support pupils to achieve.”

In his visit to Cambridge last week, Mr Laws said he was commited to ensuring school funding was fair but said the problem could not be fixed before 2015.