HUNDREDS of parents are joining forces to demand an increase in funding for the city’sschools that are facing savage budget cuts.

The fast-growing Save Our Schools (SOS) campaign was launched online this month and already has more than 800 followers on Facebook, with a major launch party planned for Thursday evening.

Organisers say that teachers’ unions’ figures project a £11.5 million shortfall in funding for Brighton and Hove schools by 2020, taking into account inflationary increases and the growing costs of pensions and salaries.

Catherine Fisher, whose six-year-old son attends St Luke’s primary school in Queen’s Park Rise, Brighton, said: “We’re talking to the Department for Education.

“We’re saying that these school need proper funding. There was a pledge in the manifesto not to reduce per pupil funding but this amounts to a swingeing per pupil cut.”

The new National Funding Formula, which will come into force in April 2018, has been created in an effort to address historic inequalities in schools funding area by area and to channel more money to schools which need it most.

Some schools in the country will receive increases of up to ten per cent, while schools whose budgets will be reduced will not face cuts of more than three per cent.

However, given the rising costs of national insurance and pensions contributions, as well as inflation generally and increases in the national living wage, even schools with level funding will see a cut in real terms.

The National Union of Teachers has calculated that nationwide the cuts could add up to £3 billion in real terms by 2020, with £11.5 million lost to Brighton and Hove’s schools.

SOS campaigner Nupur Verma said: “Any parents involved in schools can see education being stripped back to the basics. Whether it’s teaching assistants not being replaced, or art, music and sport being cut back or lost, we can already see the effect cuts in funding are having, no matter what the Government claims to the contrary.”

SOS parent Alison Ali said: “We’ve reached a tipping point. It’s time for us parents to stand alongside our teachers and heads and say we’re not prepared to see our children’s education go the way of social care and the NHS. We’re not prepared to let our kids become the lost generation.”