I am sure I wasn’t the only school governor, teacher or head to be aghast at news that the government is about to spend £2 billion of a £4bn contingency pot on “no deal” Brexit planning.

While school leaders pore over budget spreadsheets trying to salami-slice spending, the whole Brexit saga veers from surreal to comedic to deathly serious, usually in the space of a day. Often the key players seem to be playing political games with each other, using language and obscure parliamentary mechanisms that mean little out here in the real world.

What we do understand is that £4bn would put a dent in what is now a spiralling school-funding crisis. This is a world in which a quarter of all maintained secondary schools have deficits (a third of more than £500,000); the percentage of maintained primaries in debt has almost doubled in the past three years; and where about £1.5bn may be needed to plug the deficit in SEND high-needs funding in the next three years.

How will Brexit affect schools?

Bluntly, without more investment in schools, the government risks damaging the life chances of some of the most vulnerable in society. Heads will be obliged to cut staff, teach children in larger classes, and cut the sort of subjects and extracurricular activities that the third of the cabinet who went to private schools will have benefited from - and may well be seeing their own children enjoy.

They will also be expected to narrow gaps, improve pupil progress and solve all the problems austerity has heaped on families, while social and mental health services evaporate around them. It is not a pretty picture and it’s hardly surprising that the recruitment situation is grim.

So it was even more breathtaking to hear a government spokesman say that they couldn’t guarantee how much of this money would be wasted in the event of “no deal” not happening. This, of course, is the same government in which Lord “I will bet you a bottle of Champagne I can find some waste in your schools” Agnew serves as the schools minister.

Deal or no deal

Even as a passionate Remainer, I accept that a range of views on the optimum Brexit exist, but don’t be fooled into thinking any of this fearmongering is necessary. The government is making a choice to delay Parliament’s meaningful vote on the prime minister’s Brexit deal, until mid-January, running down the clock until eight weeks before we are due to leave the European Union.

The spectre of troops on standby, stockpiled drugs, the M20 lorry park, and advice to citizens and businesses on how to prepare for armageddon is supposed to terrify opponents into submission, while ramping up pressure on the EU to make further concessions on its withdrawal agreement with the UK.

But it is a dangerous game of brinkmanship that could spiral out of control if no deal becomes the default option. The £2bn currently being distributed looks like peanuts against the 6 per cent drop in GDP predicted in the event of a hard Brexit, which could cost each family about £1,000 per year and add £2.3bn to the NHS budget.

Political priorities 

No one talks about the impact on schools, but that, too, could be punishing; lower growth inevitably means lower tax revenue and less money for public services. The official Labour opposition, so wedded to ending austerity, could be all over this like a rash if its own internal contradictions about Brexit didn’t get in the way.

Alternative ways out of this crisis - a softer Brexit or a people’s vote - are being rehearsed in the media on a daily basis and could be in play already but for the prime minister’s increasingly obstinate determination to save her political skin and waste public money in the hope that people will be terrified into sealing her preferred Brexit deal.

Yet, this is the same woman who stood on the steps of Downing Street less than three years ago talking about the burning injustice of inequality, the poor life chances of white working-class boys, and the social mobility gap between state and private pupils. Schools that are on their knees financially will make all these injustices worse. Politics is about priorities and this prime minister’s latest, reckless gamble has shown where hers really lie.

Fiona Millar is a writer and journalist specialising in education and parenting issues