Schools in Shrewsbury are losing out on as much as £325,000 a year compared with their counterparts in areas just 30 miles away, a town headmaster has claimed.

Alan Brannen, headmaster of Mount Pleasant Primary School in Whitemere Road, told a public meeting last night that schools in Shropshire were facing a postcode lottery which was a massive strain on resources.

Mr Brannen, who took up his post as head of the merged school in 2009 following six years at the helm of the now defunct junior school, said schools were achieving fantastic results despite not competing on a level playing field.

He is now calling on parents to back calls to end the disproportionate funding between schools in rural counties like Shropshire and those in other areas of the country. Mr Brannen said: “In other areas they receive far more money per pupil than we do.

“I was speaking to another primary school headteacher in north Shrewsbury only the other day and they told me that a school in Wolverhampton was receiving £1,500 per pupil more than we do.

“If we received that level of funding we would have an extra £325,000 in our budget each year, we could do a lot with that.

“More funding from central government would be nice.”