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Headmaster Dave Shaw slogging his guts out on the Great North Run to raise money for his school instead of to fight cancer makes him a poster boy for opposition to savage Tory cuts that’ll do to classrooms what this Government’s austerity has already inflicted on crisis-hit hospitals.

Education is a right not a charity yet Theresa May grabbing £17,000 a year from Derbyshire’s Spire Junior School, a place of learning commended by Ofsted for good teaching and the outstanding behaviour of pupils in a deprived community, forces Shaw to hand round the begging bowl to sustain a basic public service.

When Chesterfield’s campaigning Labour MP Toby Perkins raised the local school’s plight at Prime Minister’s Questions a foundering Theresa May sounded like a dim visitor from another planet, muttering about “fairer funding” when even Westminster’s Conservative robots recognise she’s damaging the prospects of millions of children.

Spire Juniors isn’t an isolated case with the Premier’s £3billion cut to schools in England reducing funding by 8% in real terms by 2020, according to the National Audit Office.

Break that down and 98% of 24,000 schools will receive less for every kid with primaries down an average £339, secondaries £447 and the worst hit cheated of more than £1,000 per head.

May putting on her, no doubt hideously expensive, sports gear to trample all over schools is a Tory Great Education Robbery which should have parents gathering at school gates to march on Downing Street.

Destroying excellent schools on the altar of the failed ideology of austerity also involves diverting precious cash into pet projects such as grammars, despite no evidence they improve social mobility and the blanket hostility of heads in true blue bastions such as Surrey.

Or punting so-called “free” schools which don’t automatically raise standards, while other experiments such as the £9million Greater Manchester University Technical College shut only three years since opening after none of its pupils passed English GCSE .

Academies have proved better for the highly-paid education fatcats running them than the children attending them.

One head of a chain was on £400,000 – nearly three times the PM’s salary – and studies prove across the country there’s no guarantee of superior grades.

In some schools converted to academies, students do worse.

May hinted she’ll tinker with funding to try to buy off enough Tory rebels after early plans to force every school to become an academy ended in retreat.

Unless the cuts are averted next it’ll be redundant teachers rushing to the JobCentre.