It was the week that anger over the state of education prompted protestors to march on Downing Street to demand radical changes to government policy.

But the demonstration came not from Labour Party activists enthused by Angela Rayner’s barnstorming conference speech, but in the form of 2,000 soberly suited headteachers.

They may have had the look of bank managers rather than pitchfork-wielding villagers, and their moderate demeanour may have incurred the scorn of Robert Peston, but their passion and anger was unmistakable.

Marijke Miles, of Baycroft School in Hampshire, summed up the views of many when she told Tes on Facebook Live that funding pressures had already had a “drastic impact” on her pupils, adding “enough is enough”.

“I’m asking the government to help us find an urgent solution and to stop this crisis now,” she said.

But although seeing so many headteachers protesting at the heart of government was a striking sight, it does not seem to have moved many hearts at the Department for Education.

A week after the Institute for Fiscal Studies criticised the DfE for continually saying that more money was  going into schools than ever before, a spokesperson for the department said…there was more money going into schools than ever before.

And what of the party that wants to form the next government?

Labour members gathered in Liverpool for a businesslike conference that had the sober air of a party straining to be viewed as a government in waiting.

For those hoping to hear some details of its previously skeletal plans for the National Education Service, shadow education secretary Angela Rayner put a little meat on the bones.

She promised to stop the creation of any more academies or free schools - which was music to the ears of many delegates in the hall. But she carefully, if quietly, avoided promising to return existing academies to maintained status - something that many of the activists may not have realised.

Instead, there was a vague promise “to bring all publicly funded schools back into the mainstream public sector, with a common rulebook and under local democratic control”.

What those last four words actually mean remained unsaid, with a party-policy commission admitting “there is more for the commission to do” in this area.

Next will be the turn of Conservative education secretary Damian Hinds to make his pitch to teachers and parents when he takes the stage at the Tory party conference in Birmingham on Tuesday.

Stay tuned to find out whether he will have anything to say to prevent another headteachers’ march on Westminster.