English pupil funding at same level as when Tories took power, study finds

One union leader said the report showed the government’s ‘total lack of care for the impact their policies have had on the education system’. Photograph: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images

Spending on each schoolchild’s education in England has suffered an unprecedented 14-year-freeze since the Conservatives came to power, according to Britain’s leading economics thinktank.

Funding per pupil is now at 2010 levels in real terms, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said in its latest analysis of school spending, while teacher pay was at about the same real-terms level as in 2001.