The education secretary has been accused of a “sleight of hand” after claiming the government is making the “biggest injection of funding ever” into schools, when actual growth will be lower than in the 2000s.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced last week that school budgets will increase by £2.3 billion in each of the next two years, though £300 million is not new funding.
In an email to schools this week, Gillian Keegan said the funding was “over and above what has been previously committed both next year and the year after and is the biggest injection of funding ever”.
Asked what figure Keegan was referring to in her blog post, the Department for Education (DfE) pointed Schools Week towards the planned £9 billion cash-terms increase in core schools funding between 2021-22 and 2024-25.
