IT was a policy so important to Tony Blair that he name-checked it three times, telling voters his priorities were “education, education, education”.

Back in 2010, David Cameron sent his key lieutenant, Michael Gove, to drive through a revolution in schools – passing emergency legislation to give it a turbo-boost.

And the Liberal Democrats are most proud of their “pupil premium", which has directed billions to trying to narrow the stubborn achievement gap between rich and poor children.

But – with a fortnight to go – education has barely featured in this election campaign, despite some worthy promises on vocational training and apprenticeships.

Worse than that, big cuts are coming to schools whoever enters No 10. And those cuts will be particularly severe in some parts of the North-East, it appears, as I shall explain in a moment.

It is without doubt these coming cuts that explain this strange near-silence on education. All the parties would rather talk about spending rises on the NHS, for example.

When the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) crunched the numbers, it found that both the Conservatives and Labour are planning per pupil cuts of 6.6 per cent, by 2020.

That is because the Tories announced a “flat cash” settlement for schools, which means funding will not be inflation-proofed, so – as prices and costs rise – budgets will be frozen.

Labour then announced its spending would follow inflation, but not a looming bulge in pupil numbers – which, according to the IFS, puts both parties roughly on a par.

For what it’s worth, the Liberal Democrats would be more generous (only a 2.1 per cent cut, by 2020), but this money would be “back loaded”, so there would be pain until 2018 at least.

But, as I hinted earlier, it will be much worse for some parts of the region, because all the parties are committed to shifting funds to “underfunded” areas, mainly rural ones.

This could be (relatively!) good news for County Durham and North Yorkshire, which have already benefitted from this switch in this financial year.

Last year, North Yorkshire received only £4,338 per pupil, while County Durham received £4,573 – so the former was handed an extra £7.1m and the latter £4.3m.

But there are also areas that received among the highest sums per pupil, including Middlesbrough (£4,798), Hartlepool (£4,703) and Redcar and Cleveland (£4,632).

It is one thing to shift funds away from these places from within a growing education budget – but to carry it out as the overall pot is shrinking is quite another.

If it goes ahead, prepare for the squeals of pain from what are, in many cases, our poorest communities.

POLITICIANS are not responsible for the behaviour of their spouses, but I need to record the thoughts of the appalling Sarah Vine – Conservative Chief Whip Michael Gove’s worse half.

Sarah, a newspaper columnist, was already a figure of ridicule for mocking Ed Miliband’s “forlorn little kitchen”, when her own was fitted using her husband’s lucrative Commons’ expenses.

But she excelled herself with a Facebook post on the danger of a Labour/SNP post-election pact, which read: “The North and then Scotland will then leech off us until we die.”