This release contains information on income, expenditure, and revenue reserves of local authority (LA) maintained schools for the financial year 2021-22. It also includes expenditure by LAs on schools, education and community services, and children’s and young people’s services.
This release does not include expenditure by academies. The number of schools that have converted to academies continues to increase, therefore caution should be exercised when drawing comparisons over time.
You may also wish to view the Schools Financial Benchmarking website for school level data and comparisons.
Figures are presented in cash terms and are not adjusted for inflation.
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Information on income, expenditure and revenue reserves of local authority (LA) maintained schools is sourced from Consistent Financial Reporting (CFR) returns that are provided by schools. You can find school-level information on the Schools Financial Benchmarking website. This includes downloadable files which are available here.
The number of schools that have converted to academies has increased over time. This publication does not include income and expenditure for academies who return their financial information through Academy Accounts Returns. As the proportion of academies increases, the number of LA maintained schools making a CFR return decreases. For the financial year 2021-22, 12,221 LA maintained schools made a CFR return, 3.4% lower than 2020-21 and 27.1% lower than 2015-16. Therefore, caution should be exercised when comparing trends over time and overall totals should not be used for comparison purposes.
In the financial year 2021-22, LA maintained school income was £24.1 billion, £0.4 billion higher (1.8%) than 2020-21. This included:
In 2020-21 and 2021-22, income also included grants from the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, the DfE grant scheme for reimbursing exceptional costs associated with COVID-19, and income from the COVID-19 catch-up premium. This is the second reporting year of COVID-19 grants.
Total income for LA maintained schools was slightly higher than in 2020-21 in cash terms, and the number of schools (and subsequently pupils) in receipt of this income was lower. Comparisons of income per pupil therefore give a better picture of the trend in school income since 2015-16.
Places in both pupil referral units and special schools attract high needs funding therefore per pupil income is substantially higher.
95.3% of funding came from LA funding and other grants (of which 1.3% was COVID-19 grants) and 4.7% was self-generated. LA funding is detailed in the section LA Expenditure on Schools, Other Education and Community.
LA maintained schools received, in total, £23.1 billion in grant funding for the financial year 2021-22:
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, opportunities for schools to self-generate income (for example through facility hire) were limited in 2020-21. This income stream decreased from £1.4 billion in 2019-20 (5.9% of all income) to £0.7 billion in 2020-21 (3.1% of all income).
In 2021-22, as schools return to more usual ways of working, there have been increases across the majority of categories of self-generated income. However, the amount generated by schools in each category generally remains lower than in 2019-20.
Schools self-generated £1.1 billion of income in 2021-22 (4.7% of all income); an increase of 57.2% from 2020-21. Increases were seen across all categories of self-generated income with the largest drivers being:
£323.9 million (1.3%) of school income in 2021-22 came from COVID-19 related grants:
Full details of all school income can be found in Table 1.
Gross expenditure: Financial spending by LA maintained schools, before any deductions are made.
Net expenditure: Financial spending following deductions of income from catering, supply teacher insurance and community-focussed income.
Gross expenditure reported by LA maintained schools has increased, reversing the trend seen in previous years. Expenditure has otherwise decreased each year since 2011-12, driven primarily by school conversion to academy status and therefore reduction in the number of schools included within this publication. In the latest year, this decrease in the number of LA maintained schools slowed.
In the financial year 2021-22, LA maintained schools' gross expenditure was £23.9 billion, 4.0% higher than in 2020-21 when total expenditure was £23.0 billion. This included:
Last year, due to the changed situation in schools as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, schools utilised their finances differently to other years. For example, lower spend on supply teaching, learning resources, catering and community-focussed spend.
In 2021-22, as schools return to more usual ways of operating post-pandemic, expenditure in these categories has generally increased but, for most categories remains lower than 2019-20:
Community spend increased by 2.1% but remains 18.2% lower than in 2019-20.
Full details of all school expenditure can be found in Table 2.
In 2021-22, £621.8 million was spent on supply teaching costs. This includes:
This total spend on supply teachers and agency supply teachers was similar in cash terms to that of 2019-20 and has returned to usual levels following the pandemic. The spend on supply teacher insurance has declined each year since 2015-16.
Spend on supply teaching varies by phase. Spend per pupil on supply teaching was highest in pupil referral units. It accounted for 4.2% of all expenditure in 2021-22 and totalled £1,219 per pupil - the majority of this for agency supply teachers. This compares to:
In 2021-22, LA maintained schools spent £4.4 billion on education support staff. Education support staff include teaching assistants, who are more widely employed in primary schools, pupil referral units and special schools.
18.6% of total gross expenditure in primary schools and 33.4% in special schools was spent on education support staff. For pupil referral units, 17.9% was spent on education support staff. This compares to 10.3% in secondary schools. These percentages are similar to 2020-21.
Higher supply teacher costs and higher education support staff costs both contribute to the higher spending per pupil seen in pupil referral units and special schools. However, places in both pupil referral units and special schools attract high needs funding as additional costs are needed to support the needs of pupils placed in these settings. Hence the expenditure per pupil is consistently higher across years for both pupil referral units and special schools.
School revenue balance: The financial balance at the end of the year once income, expenditure, committed expenditure and previous year's revenue balance have been taken into account.
Deficit: When a school's expenditure is higher than this year's income, once the previous year's balance has been taken into account. A negative revenue balance.
Surplus: When a school's expenditure is lower than this year's income, once the previous year's balance has been taken into account. A positive revenue balance.
In 2021-22, of the 12,221 schools that submitted CFR returns:
The percentage of schools in deficit increased to 8.8%, from 8.4% in 2020-21. In 2020-21, the percentage of school in deficit fell, as schools reduced their spend on areas such as supply staff and catering and school supplies. Although they also lost self-generated income such as that from lettings and catering, this was generally lower than the amount saved, therefore increasing their revenue reserve.
As schools return to more usual ways of working, spend on supply teachers, catering and supplies has increased and although self-generated income is increasing, it is not yet back in cash terms, to pre pandemic levels. This has led to an increase in the number of schools in deficit. However, the percentage of schools in deficit remains lower than in financial years 2016-17 to 2019-20.
In 2021-22, the average revenue balance per school increased to £178,500 from £160,500 in 2020-21.
The percentage of schools in deficit has broadly decreased in all school phases in the last two years for all school phases apart from nurseries. The percentage of nursery schools in deficit has increased each year since 2018-19, from 17.6% to 29.7% in 2021-22.
By school phase, in 2021-22:
The number and percentage of schools in surplus/deficit, plus total amounts of revenue reserves are available in Table 3.
For schools in deficit:
For schools in surplus, all phases increased their surplus:
There is substantial variation in the percentage of schools in deficit around the country.
There were 22 local authorities with no primary schools in deficit. These are mostly in the Midlands, Yorkshire and the Humber, the North East or North West. There were 8 local authorities where more than a quarter of primary schools were in deficit, all were in London or the South East.
For secondary schools, there were 68 local authorities with no schools in deficit, and 4 with 100% of secondary schools in deficit, however 2 of those local authorities only have 1 LA maintained secondary school making a Consistent Financial Reporting return within the authority.
Local authority (LA) expenditure is collected via Section 251 Outturn returns.
In the financial year 2021-22, local authorities spent a total of £44.1 billion on schools, other education and community, and children's and young people's services. Of which, school expenditure consistently accounts for two thirds:
The number of schools that have converted to academies has increased over time. This publication does not include income and expenditure for academies who return their financial information through Academy Accounts Returns. As the proportion of academies increases, expenditure of LAs on maintained schools tends to decrease. Therefore, caution should be exercised when comparing trends over time and overall totals should not be used for comparison purposes.
In 2021-22, LA gross expenditure on schools was £28.8 billion. This includes £20.2 billion for individual school budgets. The remaining £7.7 billion was spent on services including behavioural support, museum and library services, top up funding and SEN support.
Despite the continuing decrease in the number of LA maintained schools, figures for expenditure on schools are 4.9% higher in cash terms than in 2021-22.
A further £3.5 billion was spent on other education and community, 14.9% higher than 2020-21.
Expenditure on schools and other education and community, by category is available in Table 4.
High needs top up funding increased in 2021-22. This is funding over and above the core high needs place funding, which a school or college receives to enable a pupil or student with high needs to participate in education and learning, by type of school:
Some SEN services and support categories of expenditure also saw an increase in 2021-22:
Support for inclusion, which includes collaboration between mainstream and special schools and expenditure for the integration of children between settings, increased by 10.6% to £157 million.
Areas of expenditure which have decreased include:
In 2021-22 LA expenditure on Other Education and Community increased for services supporting vulnerable pupils with special educational needs (SEN) and disabilities:
Other areas seeing increased spend included premature retirement costs which increased by 40.4% to £16 million, from £11 million in 2020-21.
In 2021-22 LA gross expenditure on children's and young people's services was £11.9 billion, with over half for services for children looked after:
Full details of expenditure in all categories for the financial years 2015-16 to 2021-22 can be found in Table 5.
Expenditure on children looked after (CLA) consistently forms the largest proportion of LA spending on children's and young people's services, accounting for 51.6% in 2021-22.
In 2021-22 LAs spent £6.1 billion on CLA, an increase of 8.4% in cash terms from 2020-21. The number of CLA is higher than at any point in recent years. Expenditure has followed this pattern; total expenditure per child (based on the population aged 0 to 17) is £474, higher than any point in recent years.
All categories of spend on CLA increased between 2020-21 and 2021-22, the largest rises were:
In 2021-22 £3.0 billion was spent on services for safeguarding children and young people. Of this, 88.4% was spent on social work (including LA functions in relation to child protection). This percentage has varied little in the years since 2015-16.
In 2021-22 £1.4 billion was spent on family support services. This includes, direct payments, short breaks (respite) for disabled children, targeted and universal family support.
Spend on short breaks for disabled children increased by £13.9 million (6.5%), to £226.3 million in 2021-22. However, other support for disabled children decreased by £5.8 million (8.7%) over the same period. This may indicate that local authorities were changing the nature of support offered to these children following the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2021-22 LAs spent £505 million on Sure Start children's centres and other spending on children under 5. This represents a decrease of 1.1% from 2020-21. This decrease in spending is consistent with the trend which has been seen in each year since 2010-11.
These are Official Statistics and have been produced in line with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics.
This can be broadly interpreted to mean that these statistics are:
Find out more about the standards we follow to produce these statistics through our Standards for official statistics published by DfE guidance.
If you have a specific enquiry about LA and school expenditure statistics and data:
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