CAMPAIGNERS for fairer funding for Dorset's schools are holding their breath for an announcement from the coalition government's new education department.

Members of the Dorset branch of the F40 pressure group say it's too soon to tell whether new education secretary Michael Gove will act on responses to a consultation started by the last government.

Cllr Toni Coombs, education portfolio holder at Dorset County Council, told the Daily Echo that she “lived in hope” that the new administration would recognise the additional funding costs for schools in rural areas.

“I would love to see Dorset funded to the average level. I'm not saying we deserve more than anybody else. Our children deserve an equal level of funding as other children in the country,” she said.

“The challenge is how to get that parity.”

Dorset is among the 25 lowest funded counties for education funding. Children in the county receive an average of £3,937 per pupil, compared with more than £6,000 each for pupils in some London boroughs.

Campaigners argue that a vision of Dorset as a poverty-free idyll is misplaced and that hard up families are simply more spread out than those in inner cities.

The last government began a review of education funding with a consultation on the mechanism for allocating additional cash.

New criteria - including a category for sparsity to recognise inflated transport and operational costs for small schools in rural areas - had lifted hope among the county's funding campaigners.

But a spokesman for the new Department For Education said it was too soon to say whether responses to the consultation would form part of the coalition government's schools funding policy.

He added that ministers had already declared their support for a “pupil premium” designed to give extra funding to children living in the most deprived areas.