The chief secretary to the treasury Liz Truss has insisted that education spending in England is going up in real terms.

That is in contrast to findings from thinktank the Institute of Fiscal studies, which in September found that total school spending per pupil fell by 8 per cent in real terms between 2009-10 and 2017-18.

In an appearance this morning on BBC 5 Live’s Pienaar’s Politics, Truss was interviewed about about the long period of recovery since the 2008 financial crash.

She said: “What the public care about is the outcomes from public services. Is [sic] education and schools getting better? Which it is. Our kids are now amongst the leaders in reading across Europe - 10 years ago that wasn’t the case.”

When presenter John Pienaar interjected to say that education was being squeezed, Ms Truss said: “It’s going up in real terms, John, and we put an extra £1.3 billion into education last year.”

Pienaar responded that spending was only keeping pace with school rolls, before the discussion moved onto other topics.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies told Tes in September that the Department for Education’s mantra about record funding was “doesn’t really help anyone”.

Earlier this month, it emerged that the UK Statistics Authority was investigating the government over claims it is spending record amounts on school funding, amid concerns that its figures included billions of pounds of university and private school fees.