School budgets are under "huge pressure", a Tory former DfE minister has warned, adding it was "absolutely essential" that the government did not neglect long-term planning for education and early intervention.

Tim Loughton said it was "not rocket science to see if you don't spend early to prevent the problems happening to many of these children you will pay for it later" both socially and financially.

Speaking during a Commons estimates day debate on education yesterday, he said: "School budgets are under huge pressure certainly in my constituency and in West Sussex where we have been bottom of the pile for funding over so many years, so the accumulative effect of that underfunding has meant there is no fat still to cut or the savings have been made, so just 2 per cent funding increase for teachers' pay if that is to be paid for by schools, will have enormous impacts on those school budgets to provide all the other services."

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He added: "It is such a false economy not to be doing more in those early years...It just alarms me to see early intervention as a sort of luxury add on rather than (an) absolutely essential part of everything we should be doing for our children."

Conservative MP Will Quince warned that on funding "we are on the precipice" as he lobbied for additional money for education.

He said: "The only place left to go if there is no more fat to trim is to reduce staff and that will have a detrimental impact on pupils' attainment and indeed outcomes across the board."

'Very concerned' about budget pressures

Labour MP Meg Hillier, Public Accounts Committee chair, said underfunding was "a political disease" and her committee was very concerned about budget pressures on schools.

Ms Hillier said: "It's a political disease to ask schools to do more all the time and very often assume it can just be done without additional funding.

"It's important the secretary of state watches that closely, because other bits of government suggest things to schools, that there is the funding in place and the core of what schools should be delivering is maintained.

"We're very concerned about the pressure on school budgets."

Tory Robert Halfon, chair of the Commons Education Select Committee, said: "For a start, we have to move beyond the rhetoric of school cuts versus more money than ever going into schools.

"The truth is that both characterisations are only very partial accounts and keep us talking about inputs rather than outcomes – the relationship is not simply causal.

"But that is not the same as saying schools can magically deliver world-beating results at the same time as moving from savings in their non-staff budget to their staff budgets."

Conservative Pauline Latham laid out the budget issues facing schools in her constituency, urging education secretary Damian Hinds and his ministers to "look again".

Labour's Anna Turley said at one school in her area the headteacher was forced to pay for a cleaner out of their own salary due to budget cuts.

The MP for Redcar said churches are "donating money from their charities to help prop up curriculum budgets", saying schools would not be able to "deliver teaching" without help from volunteers.