The projections for public expenditure after 2008 are so tight, the Institute for Fiscal Studies calculated, that if Gordon Brown maintained the recent growth of education spending, the National Health Service would be squeezed harder than under the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major.

The chancellor’s Budget ambition to sharply raise spending in state schools fuelled expectations that they would get future budget increases at least as large as those allocated under Labour’s spending reviews from 1999-00 to 2007-08.