The DfE will not have any “blank cheques” for schools when the government announces its spending plans for future years, the head of the department’s funding body has warned.

Her comments came on the day that headteachers warned that teachers would not get their national cost-of-living pay rise without new government money.

Eileen Milner, chief executive of the DfE’s Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA), spoke at this afternoon’s Education Show at the ExCel Centre in east London.

She said: “I wouldn’t want you to have any sense that we don’t understand the financial pressures you face, and the continued concerns about funding that you have, and which I want you to be reassured are well represented in my own organisation and the wider DfE.

“We will know more at the forthcoming spending review, but as with so much at the moment we cannot yet be certain when this will occur, or the time period over which it will extend.

“The thing I am certain about is that the spending review will not…I do not have a book of blank cheques to hand out.

“What we can and must do together now is to make sure that there is proper accountability for every pound spent and that each of those pounds is really going into delivering high quality education.”

She warned her audience that “there are probably going to be challenges” this year.

She added: “So whilst there is more money going into our schools than ever before, I know that your experience on the ground or in the classroom often feels this to be a more complex picture, and without doubt there are some financial challenges, and as the secretary of state himself says, money is going to continue to be tight.”

Ms Milner highlighted the DfE’s school resource management advisers project, which she said had found more than £35 million of savings during its pilot phase.

She said the DfE is now “rolling the programme fully out”.

Last year, academies minister Lord Agnew offered a bottle of champagne to any school where he could not identify any waste.

Asked by Tes today whether any school had won the bet, Ms Milner said: “We know he has champagne in his office, so he is keen to do it. We couldn’t say categorically not, although we know we have seen the champagne.”

Mike Pettifer, the ESFA’s director, Academies and Maintained Schools Directorate, added: “I think we would have heard if that was the case, so I don’t think so.”