A parliamentary debate on school funding traditionally follows the same predictable path: teachers, parents, education trade unions and the opposition parties all point to the fact that school budgets have been cut and there isn’t enough funding for our schools. They point to the weekly articles illustrating the impact of the cuts and the human stories behind the data.

Examples will include schools asking teachers to contribute to the purchase of classroom supplies, or cancelled school trips, or ever increasing numbers of teaching assistants being laid off, or SEND needs being inadequately met, or music lessons being cancelled. 

And still the government says: “We have increased funding for schools.” What it does not say is that what it gives with one hand, it takes with another. It repeats its mantra frequently, encouraging all those sitting on the government benches in the House of Commons to trot it out at every available opportunity, hoping that by doing this it can ignore the glaring evidence. The evidence from the Institute for Fistcal Studies that estimates that, from 2015-16 to 2018, funding for schools fell in real terms by just over 4 per cent per pupil. Or the evidence that since April 2017, the 0.5 per cent apprentice levy has been an additional burden on the payroll that drains money from budgets but cannot be used to improve learning for the pupils in classes. Or the evidence that the number of children requiring SEND support has increased by 21 per cent in the past three years while high-needs funding, including in my Hull constituency, has fallen deeper into deficit.

The government is desperate to make us believe that the emperor really does have new clothes, but I am sorry to say that those on the government front bench are now metaphorically completely naked.

During a debate on education funding this week, schools minister Nick Gibb sent his parliamentary aides scuttling back and forth, collecting data hastily produced by the civil servants sitting adjacent to the chamber, so he could interrupt MPs and wax lyrical about the extra money schools are receiving. But despite his best efforts, the overwhelming feeling from the representatives of the people was not on his side.

Tory dissent over education cuts

What surprised me, observing the debate from the opposition benches, was not the passion of the arguments from my side - that is to be taken for granted - but the number of Tories who seemed to be breaking away from the government’s mantra and demanding more money for schools.

The chair of the Education Select Committee, Robert Halfon, for example, said that the Department for Education’s funding estimate is “not strategic enough to deliver the outcomes we need”. He called into question why spending up to £200 million on expanding grammar schools is more important than spending £200 million on looking after the most vulnerable pupils by pointing out that with that money we could transform the life opportunities of hundreds of thousands of vulnerable pupils by offering free tuition for 12 weeks a year.

Another Conservative, Huw Merriman, told us that the new national funding formula had not properly taken into account the needs of rural schools before doing the previously unthinkable for a Tory and asking the government pay for a pay rise for our hard-working teachers. 

Meanwhile, William Wragg, another Tory on the Education Select Committee, said that all good Conservatives should want to put more money into education. The reason? Not to appear as pale-imitation socialists but because he believed in investing money in things with a proven rate of return.

So maybe there is a light at the end of the tunnel? Maybe the Tories are starting to recognise that Labour are correct -  Gibb’s “more money” mantra is failing to convince his own MPs, let alone the rest of the country. Maybe education secretary Damian Hinds will convince the chancellor that, if only for their own electoral success, they need “textbooks more than tanks”. Maybe then even Nick Gibb will be able to shed his emperor’s new clothes?

Maybe common sense will prevail? We can but hope.

Emma Hardy was a teacher and is now Labour MP for Hull West and Hessle