MPs have been holding education ministers’ feet to the fire on school funding this afternoon. A senior Tory has complained that schools in his constituency have not been getting the extra cash they were promised.

And there have been suggestions that Damian Hinds should resign as education secretary if his party’s pledge that “no school has its budget cut as a result of the new [national funding] formula” is not fulfilled.

The problem for Mr Hinds is that, because of the way the funding system works, he has no way of guaranteeing that it will be. Local authorities, rather than the DfE, will decide the actual amounts of funding allocated to schools for the next two years.

And as Tes exclusively revealed last month, the UK Statistics Authority has said that it was therefore not possible for the secretary of state to say that every school will definitely see a small cash increase.

In his letter, the authority’s chair, Sir David Norgrove, said: “The secretary of state’s suggestion that ‘each school will see at least a small cash increase’ was perhaps too strong.

“‘On average will’ or ‘could’ would have been more precise.”

All pretty straightforward then. Or at least it was until the DfE sent its response to our story previewing today’s debate: “There is more money going into education than ever before and the opposition’s claims are fundamentally misleading,” a spokesperson said.

“The fact is, as a result of our national funding formula, all schools will attract a gain of at least 0.5 per cent per pupil this year and 1 per cent per pupil by 2019/20.”

So the central government is able to guarantee every school will get the extra money after all then? Did something change? Has the DfE wrested away all control of school funding from local authorities? Has Damian Hinds suddenly found some more money?

A check with the DfE press office quickly established that no, that wasn’t the case - the situation remained the same.

So what was going on? Was the DfE simply ignoring the UK Statistics Authority’s concerns? Worse still, since it contained no mention of the local authority issue, and stated that all schools will “gain”, wasn’t the department’s statement more than a little misleading itself?

Not at all, Tes was told. Because the statement said that all schools would “attract” a gain - that was apparently fine. It was only if they said that schools “received” the money that they would have to qualify the statement.

There you have it. Saying a school will “attract” money doesn’t mean they get it, or “receive” it.

Mr Hinds told Parliament today: “Thousands of schools will attract 3 per cent more per-pupil this year and another 3 per cent next year.

“Some will attract even more, as a result of the minimum per-pupil funding levels, which mean every primary school will attract at least £3,500 and every secondary £4,800 by 2019-20.”

But we now know that as far as the schools are concerned, that was no guarantee at all.

William Stewart is news editor of Tes