The former education secretary has watched as class sizes have gone up, schools have fallen into disrepair and teachers have covered for cleaners. What’s next, she asks

Estelle Morris is someone who tries to see the positive side. She’s polite about political foes; she hopes that something better will come out of the nightmare that is Brexit. But she is finding it hard to sound upbeat about the financial crisis facing schools.

The former teacher and education secretary is plainly worried about mounting evidence of school cuts. A recent Guardian investigation found there’s not enough money for the basics such as textbooks, stationery and science equipment; support staff are being cut; teachers are covering for lunchtime staff and cleaners; buildings are falling into disrepair, and headteachers are relying on parents’ donations to make ends meet. One school is holding extra, non-uniform days to raise funds; another is delaying turning the heating on until November; and a teacher in Rotherham told the Guardian she buys sanitary pads and deodorant for her students as well as pens. Class sizes have gone up, school trips are off, subjects have been scrapped and pastoral care has been axed. The list goes on.

Morris, who was one of five education secretaries to serve under Tony Blair, is infuriated that instead of properly listening to and acknowledging teachers’ concerns, the government trots out the same trite defence that school funding for pupils in England is at its highest level. “So what!” she snaps. “They should be banned from saying that … Teachers are not making it up.”

What has particularly alarmed her is the growing number of schools closing early because they can’t afford to provide a full-time education. This month, Jess Phillips, the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley, Morris’s former seat, expressed outrage on Twitter after receiving an email from her son’s primary school saying that, from September, the school would close at 1pm on Friday. About 15 schools in Birmingham and more across England are resorting to sending children home at lunchtime one day a week to save money. For Morris, that’s a red line.

“We are a society that’s decided to educate our children. That means providing them with a full-time education. Very often the schools that will be closing are those serving disadvantaged communities. The fact that some of the most disadvantaged children are being deprived of 10% of their education every week – that’s the bottom line for me.

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“What comes next? If there’s no more money in the system, where does it stop? Close for a whole day? We cannot preside over a situation where children are being denied the equivalent of a full-time education.”

She remembers the same thing happening in the mid-90s because of teacher shortages. “To think that’s happening 20 years later is horrifying. Any head or governing body that gets to that point where they close the school for half a day must really feel there are no more options. It is an end-of-tether moment.”

Morris is also opposed to parents being asked to pay “voluntary” donations to prop up school budgets. “It really is a line that ought not to be crossed,” she says. “It’s this inbuilt inequality that we are putting into the system. Some schools will not have access to parental contributions. If that’s happening to any extent, it should be a siren call to government.”

It is hard to believe now, but there was a time in the not so distant past when schools in England were – comparatively – flush with money. Under Blair, for all his faults, education shot to the top of the political agenda. New ideas and initiatives flooded the sector – some well-received, some not. Architects of world renown were commissioned to design and build multi-million-pound schools in our inner cities, and resources poured into our classrooms like never before.

From today’s bleak vantage point, after almost a decade of austerity and three years of Brexit paralysis, it looks like a golden era, but it followed years of chronic underfunding. When Labour came to power in 1997, education spending was at a historic low. No one was more aware of this than Morris – now Baroness Morris of Yardley – who had spent 18 years working as a humanities teacher in an inner-city comprehensive in Coventry.

Blair changed all that. His favourite political mantra was “education, education, education”. His ministers barely had to mention an event at a school and he would be champing at the bit, offering to turn up if it would help. His mission was to put rocket boosters under the school system, and although there were doubts about his policies, there is no doubting the transformative scale of investment.

Labour’s ambition was vast. It promised to modernise the entire school building stock; it substantially increased the numbers of teachers and support staff, and put in place a large number of targeted funds and initiatives to support the education of pupils from the most disadvantaged homes.

“Under Blair’s leadership, the Labour government propelled education to the top of the agenda. That really matters,” says Morris. “It becomes a priority for resources. It gave the message to teachers, parents and kids that they are important, which was priceless. I would give Blair absolute credit for doing that.”

Scroll forward 20 years plus and the landscape has changed dramatically. Education is no longer at the top of the government agenda. “That’s one of my biggest worries,” says Morris. “All that has been lost. Your heart could break, really. It will not easily be reclaimed.”

While Brexit has sucked all energy and initiative from government, austerity and rising costs have left schools significantly poorer. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, school funding in England has fallen by 8% in real terms since 2010. For Morris, it is like going back to the 80s, when she was teaching at Sidney Stringer school in Coventry, struggling with a barely functioning photocopier. It’s like seeing your proudest achievements unravelling before your eyes. “It’s heart-breaking,” she says. “We are going back to where we were.” Even more than the lack of money, she worries about the lack of vision.

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Morris was born in Manchester in 1952 into a political family. Her uncle, Alf Morris, was the Labour MP for Manchester Wythenshawe and her father, Charles, for Manchester Openshaw. She says she was a “rather cocky” primary school pupil who was top of the class, but struggled academically at her grammar school, Whalley Range high school, and failed her A-levels. (“You learn as much from your failures as you do your successes,” she says.) From there she went to Coventry College of Education to train to be a teacher and later became head of sixth form at Sidney Stringer. It was a valuable training ground.

“It informed my views about education. Working in a school like that, it reminds you of the necessity of education, and the power of education.” Morris’s pupils included asylum seekers from a range of different countries. There were few resources, and lots of children who struggled. “It was not always an easy job. I didn’t always love it. It was tough. Not forgetting what it was like to teach stood me in good stead when I was a minister.” She still bumps into former pupils and says those who have done well acknowledge the role their education played. That belief in the power of education will in turn, she says, be passed down to the generations that follow.

“It was an inner-city school. It was a great school. We had our share of troubled children and disaffected children, children who found it really difficult in school. Their behaviour is not always easy.

“I feel guilty looking back. In those days I don’t think we appreciated that youngsters had mental health problems. It’s only in the last 10 to 15 years that, as a society, we’ve understood that troubled children need absolutely specialist help. When I look back, I think – there was a little group. I hope they survived. I hope they’re all right.”

Morris always intended to go into politics. She became a local councillor before being elected to parliament in 1992. In 1998 she became a schools minister and was promoted to the key cabinet role of education secretary in 2001. Her tenure, however, was brief. Just over a year after taking up office, mired in a series of embarrassing policy crises, she resigned, saying she hadn’t done the job as well as she should have done.

It was a rare moment of mea culpa in British politics. Polly Toynbee, writing in this paper, said there were tears among colleagues at the loss of a woman “too decent and human to bear life at the top of politics”. Morris returned to government less than a year later and spent two years as a minister at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, before leaving parliament in 2005. Since then she has held roles as pro vice-chancellor of Sunderland University, chair of the Children’s Workforce Development Council for England, president of the National Children’s Bureau, and chair of council at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Schools remain her abiding passion, however. Morris is modest by nature, but says she is proud of her work on teacher workforce reform, which saw the introduction of teaching assistants (TAs), bursars and mentors into schools, to free up teachers to do what they are trained for – teach their pupils. Before that, teachers were expected to do everything, with the help of one lab assistant, a school secretary and a small admin team. “In a school community you need more than teachers to make a success of giving a child the best chance.”

Now, says Morris, there’s a real worry that in the current funding crisis, all that infrastructure, all those supporting roles that she helped introduce to free teachers to teach are being eroded. Schools are doing their best to protect teaching jobs as far they can – it is the TAs and pastoral care teams that are going. “What that means is that the teacher is going to pick up those jobs. Wherever you make your saving, it doesn’t mean the job hasn’t got to be done.”

Morris worries that today’s school leaders have no experience of managing with diminishing budgets. She worries about pupils with special educational needs losing out. (“It’s an absolutely massive problem.”) And she worries that there are fewer resources, at a time when need is greater. More people are poorer, and that in turn puts more pressure on schools. (“We all know schools that have washing machines so they can wash children’s clothing. We don’t talk about it.”)

Sustained investment is needed, but beyond the financial challenges facing schools, she’s worried about a draining away of energy and ambition from education. Every time she makes a speech and questions follow, it’s about lack of funding.

“It worries me that we are getting into a circle of despondency and despair. I understand why. They are short of funds. But being short of money stops them having the conversations they need to have to take their schools forward. If you are worrying about money all the time and how to fix the budget, you’re not talking as much about pedagogy.

“It’s not just that there’s no money there. It’s how having no money affects the prevailing conversations and debates and ambitions in the school. The minute you start having that conversation saying: we can’t do that because we have no money – it’s like the last 20 years have been wasted.

“Schools have got to keep their energy,” she says. “Teachers should speak up about their successes. We do a huge disservice if we stop talking about the wonderful things that are going on in schools. It’s still happening,” she says, positive to the end. “I still see some fantastic things. I’m absolutely certain that the quality of teaching is better than it ever has been and kids still get a better deal than when I taught.”