WE all wish to see a fair share of the financial cake coming into this county's schools as it is unfair that our schools receive less Government money than schools in other counties.

One secondary school head teacher has put it to me excellently. "Lack of a common, understandable, transparent and equitable funding system leads to many anomalies" and there is "too much reliance on 'bidding.' Schools, and heads in particular, have much more important matters to deal with. We all should have access to these funds as an entitlement not just if we have a business background."

More money for education generally is essential to bring us into line internationally. This would have to come from taxation.

I believe people would agree to this for education. Even though spending per pupil has increased, the proportion of the GDP spent on education has fallen since 1997 from 5 per cent during the previous five years to an average of 4.9 per cent (Sunday Times, April 15, 2001).

However money is not the only problem. Ask any teacher and they will complain about the 140 Government guidance circulars with which they had to contend in six months last year. Greater autonomy for schools and teachers to manage themselves is also of huge importance.

Better resources with more trust and freedom would help restore morale among teachers. This now is at an all-time low and recruitment and retention of qualified and experienced teaching staff to fill the increasing vacancies is at crisis point.

In some schools dealing with poor behaviour among pupils is increasingly difficult. This takes time and impacts badly on the quality of teaching and learning.

Because of low morale so many of our best and most experienced teachers are just hanging on until the earliest practical date for retirement.

Morale could be improved by bringing working conditions into line with those prevailing in Scotland.

Improvements could also easily be affected at little cost by sensitive Government allowing teachers to do their exacting jobs free from bureaucratic restraints and a crippling load of paperwork.

Disruptive pupils must be more swiftly dealt with to allow the vast majority of well-behaved pupils to gain the life skills that they most urgently require in the technological age that confronts us all.