Headteacher silences Piers Morgan over funding crisis

A West Sussex headteacher has achieved that rarest of victories '“ having the final word against Piers Morgan.
Piers MorganPiers Morgan
Piers Morgan

Mr Morgan was interviewing Peter Woodman about the county’s education funding crisis, on Good Morning Britain today (October 4), when he accused headteachers of making “last-ditch Armageddon threats”.

Those “threats” included increasing class sizes, narrowing the curriculum and even reducing the number of hours schools are open to enable the county’s schools to make their paltry budgets stretch.

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As one of the lowest-funded local authorities in the country, West Sussex has seen its schools struggling to make end meet as their costs grow larger and larger. Members of the Worth Less? campaign for fairer education funding have pleaded with the government for a payment of £20million to help ease the pressure.

During the Good Morning Britain interview, Mr Morgan – in his usual confrontational style – accused Mr Woodman and the other headteachers of having no intention of carrying out their “threats”.

Completely unruffled, Mr Woodman calmly pointed out that one of his previous schools, in Oxfordshire, had done just that several years ago when he was deputy head.

A somewhat sheepish Mr Morgan promptly retracted his statement.

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After the interview, Mr Woodman, of The Weald School, said: “It was slightly nerve-wracking.

Piers Morgan is slightly combative and will ask questions to provoke, but I think I had the opportunity to put over the main points – and they are really serious points.

“It’s not about me, it’s about all headteachers in West Sussex; it’s not about my school, it’s about all schools in West Sussex.”

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