Government vows £1.3bn additional funding for schools

"Schools need the money now so they can provide the teaching and support all their pupils need to reach their potential", she said.

Justine Greening's announcement has prompted disappointment and frustration in some quarters after it was found to include no new money for the Department for Education.

Ms Greening added: "It will mean that the total schools budget will increase by £2.6 billion between this year and 2019/20, and per pupil funding will now be maintained in real terms for the remaining two years of the spending review period to 2019/20".

Ms Greening said the rest of the money would come from reprioritising spending and moving money to the core schools programme.

Ms Greening said that the money - to offset the effects of a new funding formula for schools - proved that the government was "determined to listen" after the proposed new formula proved hugely unpopular during the general election campaign.

"We are concerned that this is not new Treasury money".

There will... be an additional £1.3 billion for schools and high needs across 2018-19 and 2019-20, in addition to the schools budget set at Spending Review 2015.

But the cash for schools will be taken from elsewhere in the education budget, such as building free schools.

The education secretary said the website, which was used extensively by school funding campaigners and opposition candidates during the election campaign, had been "worrying parents", and questioned whether it would be updated to reflect her announcement.

She said that the boost will ensure that the basic amount of funding for every pupil will increase over the next two years while the new regime is introduced.

For many years there have been complaints that schools in different parts of the country were receiving different levels of per pupil funding.

Geoff Barton of the ASCL head teachers' union, said the move was a "step in the right direction and an acknowledgment of the huge level of concern around the country on this issue".

Chris Keates leader of the NASUWT teachers' union called Ms Greening's statement "a recycled announcement of recycled money".

Overall real terms spending on schools in England by the end of the decade will have been cut by almost five per cent, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

The formula divvies up funding between local authorities across the United Kingdom, and the reform will see schools in London lose out.

Shadow education secretary Angela Rayner said Ms Greening had announced "nothing more than a sticking plaster", adding: "Per pupil funding will still fall over the course of this Parliament unless further action is taken urgently".

Overall, Mr Sibieta told The Independent, between 2015 and 2019 real terms funding for schools in England will have fallen by 4.6 per cent instead of 6.5 that was previously forecast.

It's believed it will deliver the biggest improvement to the school funding system for well over a decade. That is why I am confirming plans to get on with introducing a national funding formula in 2018/19.

£280 million from the free schools budget.