Behind the manifesto gloss, all parties promise further cuts

I have been reading the election manifestos to see what they say about children. You need to read the words extraordinarily carefully, with huge attention to detail, and using a deep cynicism filter, in order to work out what they actually mean - and often you need a good understanding of accountancy and demography as well. Fine words butter no parsnips. Worse, many voters will only hear soundbite extracts that say nothing beyond their own reductionist rhetoric.

I have worked on education financing for years, so I have been looking at the school funding proposals quite carefully. One of the two main parties - as you'll see shortly, it doesn't matter which - would increase schools funding in line with numbers of children aged five to 16 - with numbers going up fast, at first blush this seems a good deal. The other main party would, instead, protect the whole schools budget in real terms, which also seems a positive story. The problem is that we have both inflation and increasing numbers, as well as pay pressures and increases in pensions and national insurance.