A ROW over school funding has broken out amid concerns pupils in Hampshire and Southampton are losing out because the areas are considered affluent.

Newly-published figures reveal many other local education authorities in the country receive more money for teachers, books and computers.

Hampshire was handed just £2,438 per primary school pupil while Southampton was given £2,618 per pupil.

This compares to Tower Hamlets in London which gets almost twice as much - £4,155 per pupil.

Towns such as Reading (£2,999 per pupil) and Luton (£2,778) receive £300-plus more per pupil than Hampshire.

For each secondary school pupil, Hampshire receives £3,110.

This compares with Tower Hamlets (£5,051), Slough (£3,736) and Reading (£3,584). Meanwhile, Southampton gets £3,334.

The huge differences in spending per pupil are revealed in the Local Government Settlement for 2005-06.

But councils with the lowest grants claim their pupils are being discriminated against.

They say they are forced to plunder cash from other services to ensure children do not miss out.

While Hampshire receives less funding because it is considered wealthier, civic chiefs say there are still areas with significant pockets of poverty and deprivation.

Hampshire County Council leader Councillor Ken Thornber said: "For the last five or six years at least, the funding per pupil in Hampshire has been one of the worst in the country and I have never understood why.

"I do not understand why schools in London have almost double the allocation of funds than we have when their costs are not demonstrably higher, although I accept that teachers have a London allowance"

He said that over recent years he had seen "a deliberate attempt" to take money from the south and redeploy it to the north and the Midlands.

"I despair of getting fair funding for Hampshire children," he said. Fareham MP Mark Hoban, a Tory education spokesman, said: "We need to look at disparities of funding urgently because rural areas lose out badly.

"Some rural areas have places which are very severely deprived."

A Department for Education spokesman defended the settlement, saying: "Local education authorities with a greater proportion of pupils with additional educational needs with receive a higher level of funding per pupil."