A CONSERVATIVE would-be MP will not face teachers at a hustings event next week – in a town where just weeks ago every headteacher wrote to parents expressing grave concerns over funding cuts.

Peter Cuthbertson is the only political candidate standing for election in Darlington next month who has declined an invitation to the event, which has been organised jointly between the town's Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College and the National Union of Teachers.

He said he had decided only to attend a select few, well-attended hustings to give him more time to go doorknocking, and said: "Some hustings during the last election had mostly the very same 20 or so people, night after night – and they'd already clearly made their minds up."

The education-themed question time on Thursday night will involve Labour's candidate Jenny Chapman, Matthew Snedker of the Green Party, Anne-Marie Curry, Liberal Democrat candidate and Kevin Brack, of Ukip.

It is understood that the event, first held during the run-up to the last election, attracted more than 100 people, and is open to members of the public as well as teachers.

Julie Ashmore, of the NUT, said: "I would have liked to have seen this very serious issue being discussed by all the Parliamentary candidates."

Heads from 31 primary and eight secondary schools in Darlington joined together to write to all parents in March, urging them to lobby the government over education funding before a £7m black hole develops in their budgets by 2020.

They warned unless action is taken, the lack of funds from central Government would lead to swelling class sizes, fewer teachers and the potential for a skeletal curriculum being imposed.

Mr Cuthbertson said he had accepted two out of three of the hustings invitations he had received so far, and would be attending a student-only hustings event at the college the following day, as well as another at St Cuthbert's Church two weeks before the election.

He said: "As a former QE student I am really looking forward to addressing the students there next week at those hustings. I also look forward to the main hustings event at St Cuthbert's.

"But I am doing fewer hustings than last time, because of the shortness of the campaign. I did about 14 last time.

"Some of them were extremely well attended like the St Cuthbert's hustings and I'll be doing them again.

"I want to be out as many mornings, afternoons and evenings as I can meeting new voters instead."