Thanks to the Cambridgeshire headteacher who explains how her small primary school feels the impact of Brexit:

Brexit isn’t just an abstract thing that is happening in Westminster and Brussels. It has an effect on everyone of us, in all of our lives. Take this for an example.

I am headteacher of a small primary school in Cambridgeshire. In the last few years, we have struggled to keep our heads above water financially, because, compared to other local authorities, Cambridgeshire has been historically underfunded. Yet with prudence and a lot of volunteer fundraising, we have got by.

But now we are being hit by a perfect storm. The fairer funding formula we have long campaigned for, has been unveiled: we are horrified to find that it leaves us with less money than we had before, due to the way the funding has been divided up. Not only that, but an increase in pension contributions, the apprenticeship levy and the move to the living wage, which has led to a rise in the cost of our cleaning services, have all meant that our funding doesn’t stretch as far as it used to.

And then Brexit has played its part. Our catering provider says that he must put up the cost of his services because the falling pound has increased the cost of imported foods and transport costs. Then we find the school’s energy costs are increasing, again because of the lower value of the pound. What does this mean for our school?

Well, I have a choice. I can cut staff, reduce the number of classes in the school and increase the number of children in each class. With this option, one class will contain 45 children during the afternoons, but the classroom isn’t big enough for 45 chairs and tables. Some of the children will have to work on the floor. There won’t be space for any practical work, and it will get pretty stuffy in the summer.

The other choice is to cut all the extras that children in other, bigger, better-funded schools get: no more specialist music teaching, no more specialist French teaching, no more supply teachers to cover teachers when they go on courses – instead, the cover will be provided by teaching assistants or myself, no more new books or PE equipment, certainly no new computers.

It will be like teaching in the 1950s just after the war, when there was still rationing. Children will recite their tables and list the countries of the Empire. Just what Mr Gove ordered, in fact …

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