Since 2009, school spending per pupil in England has fallen by about 8% in real terms, with a smaller fall in Wales of about 5%. While total school spending has risen in England by about 1% in real terms over this period, a 10% rise in pupil numbers means that slightly increased resources are now more thinly spread. In Wales, spending has fallen by around 5% but because pupil numbers there have remained constant, it is English schools that have experienced the more severe cuts. Since spending per pupil in Wales was lower before 2009, the cuts have evened things out.

These are the facts about the current position. That they are not more widely known is partly because the amount of money going to schools for pupils under 16 was protected until 2015. Only by taking into account large reductions in spending on sixth forms, and by local authorities, was the independent Institute of Fiscal Studies able to present a more complete picture of the budget pressures faced by schools, in a report this month.

Damian Hinds had only been education secretary for a month when his Labour shadow, Angela Rayner, reported him to the UK Statistics Authority for making the incorrect claim that “real-terms funding per pupil is increasing across the system”. The mistake was corrected, and six months into the job Mr Hinds has now recognised not only that school budgets are being cut, but that such cuts are unsustainable and destructive. Last Friday he told the Guardian he is fighting for additional funds from the Treasury amid ongoing negotiations about a pay rise for teachers, who have fallen behind those in other developed countries as public sector pay has been squeezed under the government’s austerity programme.

Mr Hinds is correct that there is a “special case” to be made for school funding because educating the next generation is so important, and his frankness about problems, including teacher workload and exam stress, is welcome. Chancellor Philip Hammond should pay more attention to his measured bid than to recent grandstanding by the defence secretary, Gavin Williamson, who is similarly eager to secure a bigger budget. Teachers should get a pay rise not only because they deserve one, but because schools are dealing with a recruitment and retention crisis, with the Ofsted chief, Amanda Spielman, among those highlighting the risk of experienced staff “burning out”.

When Mr Hinds was appointed in January, all eyes were on the government’s promised expansion of grammar schools. His predecessor Justine Greening was thought to have infuriated the prime minister with her lack of enthusiasm for the policy. Mr Hinds, who attended a Catholic grammar school (Ms Greening went to a comprehensive), said he backed it, and followed up with a promise to scrap the 50% cap on faith-based admissions to free schools.

It is a relief that the focus has shifted to the more urgent problems confronting schools across the country. But the promise to let grammar schools expand, and allow free schools to operate highly restrictive admissions policies, must not be forgotten. Austerity has caused serious problems in education. But so has the government’s ideological, market-based approach, with its explicit drive to create winners and losers, and drive improvement through competition rather than cooperation. Free schools, and in particular studio schools, have been a fiasco, while the academies programme has consumed vast resources and failed to deliver.

The flagship coalition policy of the pupil premium meant poorer and more vulnerable children were offered some protection from these effects. Recent rises in exclusions and “off-rolling”, whereby children are voluntarily removed at a school’s urging, along with cuts to special needs provision and moves against inclusive education, show the extent to which such protections have been stripped out, while the extent of mental illness and unhappiness among young people is deeply worrying. Mr Hinds may have grasped some of the problems facing schools. But he has offered no solution.