Phil Cook, of Torquay Road, Kingskerswell, a former county councillor, writes:

Anne Marie Morris in recent pamphlets has made great play of the inequality of funding for Devon's schoolchildren in comparison with other parts of the country. In recent years Devon county councillors have repeatedly lobbied government ministers to redress this unfairness.

I have to say that the Labour government, for all its faults, has increased spending on education in real terms over a number of years so that our schools are better funded today than at any time under the Tory governments of the 1990s.

As a former county councillor I well remember the underfunding for education that occurred circa 1995. The Liberal Democrat administration at County Hall attempted to address this matter by means of a modest increase in the council tax. John Gummer, the relevant Secretary of State, refused to reply to our question of whether this increase would be subjected to a government cap.

We therefore went ahead with the council tax demands only to hear that Mr Gummer had indeed imposed a cap. This cost the council £500,000 in re-issuing the council tax demands and resulted in 200 teacher redundancies. Did our Devon Tory MPs stand up to the government and back the children of Devon? I don't think so.

I can also remember the niggardly capital sums that the Tory government allowed for repairing and modernising our schools – about £12million annually. To be fair, under the present government, which is by no means perfect, Devon's schools have enjoyed fourfold this amount for a number of years. If we were still under a Tory government many of our schoolchildren would still be being taught in draughty leaking second world war Horsa huts.

George Osborne, the Tory Shadow Chancellor, has stated that education frontline services would be protected under a Tory government. Take note, he did not say that education spending would be maintained. Should we have confidence that school funding in Devon will be improved under the Tories? Pardon me if I have doubts.

I imagine that this history of school spending will be news to Anne Marie as she was not a Devon resident at the time.

Perhaps she has lessons to learn from such a history.THIS AND OTHER LETTERS IN OUR ONLINE EDITION