The prime minister may have announced the era of austerity is now over.

But anyone hoping a positive announcement on school funding would follow this week was to be disappointed.

It was nonetheless another big week in education news.

Misleading the way?

The message from government remains the same: that more money than ever before is going into schools - despite getting a fierce rebuke from the UK Statistics Authority for saying this.

In fact the authority was so concerned that it has written to Damian Hinds warning him that his department had used misleading figures on four separate occasions.

Not least by saying that “more money is going into schools than ever before”.

The authority says figures were “presented in such a way as to misrepresent changes in school funding” by not breaking down funding according to spending per pupil.

The authority also criticised the DfE for saying that there are 1.9 million more pupils attending good or outstanding schools than in 2010 without explaining that there are more pupils in schools full stop and some inspection outcomes are more than a decade old.

If the government felt chastised by this it didn’t really show because Theresa May repeated these claims a few days later at Prime Minister’s Questions.

She also ignored calls for all teachers to get the 3.5 per cent pay rise recommended by the pay body earlier this year.

Party politics

Labour unsurprisingly has sought to make the most of the controversy, with Angela Rayner accusing the government of telling “lies” and misleading the public about the state of school funding.

The shadow education secretary said that schools have faced real terms funding cuts since 2015 because rising costs are not being met.

However it has not all been one way traffic.

Mr Hinds has strongly criticised Labour’s plans to end academisation and scrap the free schools programme.

In an open letter to Ms Rayner, Mr Hinds says his government has “extended the good work” started under Labour politicians such as Tony Blair and Andrew Adonis, and questions why the Labour Party now wants to distance themselves from them. Hinds claimed Labour is “promoting a dangerous control freakery” which “puts ideology first and children second”.

Ofsted thinks it can reduce workload

Another big story this week is Ofsted’s plans for a new inspection framework which gives less weight to results and looks in more detail at each school’s curriculum.

Chief inspector Amanda Spielman confirmed that the outcomes grade was going to make way in future school inspections for a broader judgement on the quality of education.

Ofsted is proposing a major rethink in how it inspects schools with Ms Spielman admitted that in the past the inspectorate was too focused on results and that this had created extra workload and pressure on school leaders and teachers.

There have been concerns among heads and the DfE that bringing in a new framework will create more work. Speaking to heads at the Schools NorthEast summit, Ms Spielman resisted calls for the framework to be delayed and said that it would actually reduce workload. The chief inspector also said the plans were a warning shot across the bows of schools which get good results the wrong way.

Ofsted was also in the news this week over criticism that it praised two schools on safeguarding, judging them “effective”, despite being warned of failures in their protection of child rape victims.

One charity leader told Tes that Ofsted urgently needed to scrutinise how schools are handling sexual harassment and violence rather than just looking at their paper policies.

In one of the cases brought to Tes’ attention, a six-year old girl was raped multiple times at school, despite staff reportedly being present in the playground during sexual attacks. The girl’s mother repeatedly tried to alert Ofsted to this during an inspection and eventually spoke to an inspector. 

Ofsted has said that it stands by its judgement in both cases and had made extensive efforts to address the parents’ concerns.

The week ended with a story that will chime with many teachers - a poll of headteachers carried out by Tes and the Association of School and College Leaders found that 70 per cent of heads believed their building was not fit for purpose. And of those almost half have had to close part of their buildings in the past year.

Heads warn of problems with leaks, crumbling classrooms, asbestos and lack of space. The findings have prompted ASCL’s general secretary Geoff Barton to call for a major programme of repairs to tackle the national decay in schools.

What message, he asks, does it send to pupils and teachers who are asked to work in schools that are not fit for learning?