The government has been accused of "conning" the public over its education spending.

Shadow Education Secretary, Theresa May, has attacked the government for its stream of funding announcements and re-announcements, which she says have exaggerated the amount that schools are receiving.

"Instead of education, education, education, we've had spin, trickery and betrayal," said Ms May.

While the government promised more funds, in practice many schools were still struggling to afford basic materials such as books, said Ms May.

Ms May told the House of Commons that education spending announced in press releases since the government came into office added up to almost �185bn.

This inflated impression of spending was the result of constant re-announcements of spending plans, said Ms May, with some individual spending pledges being announced 21 times.

"This astonishing figure shows that Labour really do say one thing and do another on education. The reality is that, not only have the government not spent �185bn extra money on education, they haven't even spent as much as they promised they would.

"Labour are spending less on education than the last Conservative government. Tony Blair said they would spend more on education. To match their pre-election rhetoric, they should be spending �32billion on education, not �19billion."

Ms May also accused the government of introducing university tuition fees, "despite pledging it had no plans to do so".

However the Education Secretary David Blunkett angrily rejected the claim that the level of funding was less than under the previous government.

Trading statistics with the opposition spokeswoman, Mr Blunkett said that spending per pupil had risen and that across the period of the comprehensive spending review there would be a substantial overall increase in education funding.

Expressing his surprise at the "audacity" of Ms May's attack on the government's education record, Mr Blunkett asserted that the government was supporting schools in a manner that the previous government had never attempted.

Speaking for the Liberal Democrats, Phil Willis accused the Conservatives of presenting an unnecessarily negative picture of education - pointing to the recent publication of a report from inspectors saying that standards were rising.

Mr Willis also attacked the Conservatives proposal for 'free schools', saying that it would create administrative mayhem rather than provide greater freedom for parents and schools.

But Mr Willis called on the government to re-consider its policy of "creeping privatisation" in its interventions in struggling education authorities.

And he said that there were still serious difficulties in recruiting teachers for a number of shortage subjects.