So, Will Quince has finally woken up to the fact that Colchester's schools and colleges are underfunded.

Could there be an election in the offing?

While he is keen to promote himself as a champion for our local schools, I would point out over the last four years Mr Quince has consistently voted for a continuation of the Government's austerity policies which have created the problems.

It is also disappointing to see him still using the same statistics about school funding going up that the Department for Education has been trotting out for years.

What is never mentioned is the so-called "record level" of funding has failed to keep pace with inflation and that there have also been record numbers of children in schools.

The National Education Union, along with the National Association of Head Teachers, has consistently argued funding for schools is down by 8 per cent in real terms since 2010.

The National Audit Office agrees, the Institute of Fiscal Studies agrees, parents can see it is true, and, as Mr Quince has suddenly realised, so can the electorate.

Whatever Mr Quince feels, this is a cut to school budgets and schools have had to make difficult choices to stay within their budgets.

Every week; the National Education Union is being called to support members facing redundancy, we hear about essential repairs and maintenance to school buildings having to be postponed, we learn of children with special educational needs being denied the support they need to be able to access the curriculum, class sizes are increasing with more primary children now in classes of over 30 than at any time in the last 50 years, we hear from teachers, support staff and parents who are buying basic classroom resources because the school cannot afford them.

The cuts will have affected different schools in different ways but 91 per cent of schools in Essex have suffered cuts. If parents would like to know how their child's school has been affected I urge them to visit schoolcuts.org.uk for more details.

While welcoming Mr Quince's efforts to tackle education underfunding, I look forward to reading an acknowledgement from him that his Government's austerity policies are the main cause of the problem and he is prepared to accept some of the blame.

Who knows, we might even see him at the next People's Assembly anti-austerity rally.

David Evans

North East Essex secretary, National Education Union

Lilian Impey Drive, Colchester