WALTHAM Forest teaching staff should be paid inner London wages to enable schools to compete with those with similar problems in nearby boroughs, said council leader Chris Robbins.
The borough's teachers earn on average 4.5 per cent less than their counterparts in nearby inner London areas such as Newham and Hackney.
Headteachers at the top end of the scale can expect to earn an estimated £4,000 more by working in “inner” London.
Cllr Robbins said: “This cannot continue, the schools in the south of the borough have the same issues and challenges as schools in Newham.
“We would like extra funding to put this right.”
School funding is the latest issue in which Waltham Forest is losing out because of its historical designation as an outer London borough.
The council is also pushing for 120 more police officers as Cllr Robbins believes the borough is in danger of becoming a “soft touch” for criminals in the run up to the 2012 Olympics.
Pat Stannard, a school governor at The Woodside school, in Wood Street, Watlhamstow described the continuing designation of Waltham Forest as outer London as “totally illogical”.
She said: “There are two issues here, teachers will go to Newham or other boroughs to do the same work for more wages.
“And secondly Waltham Forest has the same problems, the same sort of numbers of children, same challenges and same degrees of poverty as those other boroughs.
“Waltham Forest continues to be classed as outer London because it has a border with Essex but I have never seen any sense in it.”
Cllr Robbins comments come in a week when Lynne Featherstone, MP for Hornsey and Wood Green in north London asked a question in Parliament about an anomaly which means some London boroughs receive outer London rates of funding but have to pay inner London wages to staff.
News reports mistakenly listed Waltham Forest as one of a number of boroughs affected by the anomaly, which the Government has promised to look at.
The authority is also continuing to push for more funding to ease the borough's crisis over school places.
The borough needs an extra 3,760 places by 2012, and hundreds of children are currently being taught in temporary classrooms.
A Government consultation will be published on the future of schools funding in January.
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