Financial year 2020-21

LA and school expenditure

Data guidance

Published 16 December 2021

Description

This document describes the data included in the School Finance in England National Statistics release’s underlying data files. This data is released under the terms of the Open Government License and is intended to meet at least 3 stars for Open Data.

The methodology document should be referenced alongside this data. It provides information on the data sources, their coverage and quality as well as explaining methodology used in producing the data.

Coverage

The Statistical Publication: ‘School Finance in England’ provides the latest information at national, regional and local level on the expenditure on schools, education and children's and young people's services by local authorities. Alongside the local authority spending, the release also provides a detailed breakdown of income and expenditure by schools, with aggregations to the local authority, regional and national level. The publication summarises the information that was collected via the summer 2021 Consistent Financial Reporting (CFR) and S251 Outturn collections . It supersedes the January 2021 data release.

The CFR data will also be available at an individual school level via the Schools Financial Benchmarking website.

This publication includes information on:

Local authority spending on schools and other education - time-series giving the detailed breakdown of spending split by school-phase and overall spending area (e.g. individual schools budget, expenditure on free school meals, SEN support etc).
Local authority spending on children's and young people's services - time-series giving the detailed breakdown of spending split by provision sector (e.g. own, private, voluntary) and spending area (e.g. sure start centres, family services, youth justice etc).
Schools' income and expenditure - time-series giving the detailed breakdown of schools income and expenditure by school phase and financial area (e.g. staff, estates and buildings, etc)
Schools' revenue balances - time-series giving the overall financial balance data for schools and overall numbers of schools in surplus and deficit.

File formats and conventions

The data files are provided in comma-separated values format, which is compatible with standard spreadsheet software such as Excel.

The following symbols are used in the underlying data files as follows:

: Not available - this information has not been collected or there are no estimates available at this level of aggregation.

N/A Not available - this is normally where a statistic cannot be produced. For example where a denominator is not available to produce a percentage.

z = not applicable. The 'z' symbol is only to be used when an observation is not applicable (e.g. in tables of employment where people under 16 cannot legally be employed).

Data files

All data files associated with this releases are listed below with guidance on their content. To download any of these files, please visit our data catalogue.

LA maintained schools, all expenditure (National, Regional, LA levels) (£million)

Filename: la_maintained_schools_expenditure_final.csv
Geographic levels: Local authority; National; Regional
Time period: 2015-16 to 2020-21
Content: This file contains expenditure data for local authority maintained schools collected via the Consistent Financial reporting data collection.

Variable names and descriptions

Variable names and descriptions for this file are provided below:

Variable name	Variable description
expenditure_£million	Expenditure (£ million)
expenditure_description	Category of expenditure
expenditure_per_pupil	Expenditure per pupil
school_phase	Phase of education - Filter by school type

Footnotes

There are a small number of local authorities with no LA maintained secondary schools, all are academies.

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LA maintained schools, all income (National, Regional, LA levels) (£million)

Filename: la_maintained_schools_income_final.csv
Geographic levels: Local authority; National; Regional
Time period: 2015-16 to 2020-21
Content: This file contains income data for local authority maintained schools collected via the Consistent Financial reporting data collection.

Variable names and descriptions

Variable names and descriptions for this file are provided below:

Variable name	Variable description
income_£million	Income (£ million)
income_description	Category of income
income_per_pupil	Income per pupil
school_phase	Phase of education - Filter by school type

Footnotes

There are a small number of local authorities with no LA maintained secondary schools, all are academies.

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LA maintained schools, revenue reserves, (National, Regional, LA levels) (£million)

Filename: la_maintained_schools_revenue_reserve_final.csv
Geographic levels: Local authority; National; Regional
Time period: 2015-16 to 2020-21
Content: This file contains revenue reserves data for local authority maintained schools collected via the Consistent Financial reporting data collection.

Variable names and descriptions

Variable names and descriptions for this file are provided below:

Variable name	Variable description
average_revenue_balance	Average revenue balance per school
B01_million	Committed revenue balances (B01) (£ million)
B02_million	Uncommitted revenue balances (B02) (£ million)
B03_million	Devolved formula capital balance (B03) (£ million)
B05_million	Other capital balances (B05) (£ million)
B06_million	Community-focused school revenue balances (B06) (£ million)
number_schools	Number of schools making a Consistent Financial Reporting (CFR) return
number_schools_with_deficit	Number of schools with a negative revenue balance
number_schools_with_surplus	Number of schools with a surplus revenue balance
OB01_million	Opening pupil-focused revenue balance (OB01) (£ million)
OB02_million	Opening community-focused revenue balance (OB02) (£ million)
OB03_million	Opening capital balance (OB03)(£ million)
PC_schools_with_deficit	Percentage of schools with a negative revenue balance (deficit)
PC_schools_with_surplus	Percentage of schools with a surplus revenue balance
revenue_balance_as_pc_total_income	Revenue balance as a percentage of total income
school_over_threshold_av_per_school	Average surplus per school for schools over the threshold
school_over_threshold_pc_surplus	Percentage of schools with a surplus over the threshold
school_phase	Phase of education - Filter by school type
school_surplus_over_threshold_million	Total surplus of schools over the threshold (£ million)
schools_surplus_over_threshold	Number of schools with a surplus over the threshold
total_income_million	Total income (£ million)
total_revenue_balance_million	Total revenue balance (£ million)
total_revenue_reserve_schools_deficit_million	Total revenue balance of schools with a deficit (£ million)
total_revenue_reserve_schools_surplus_million	Total revenue balance of schools with a surplus (£ million)

Footnotes

Includes schools making a part year return as they converted to academies part way through the financial year
There are a small number of local authorities with no LA maintained secondary schools, all are academies.

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S251 Outturn - Children and Young People's Services (National, Regional, LA levels)

Filename: s251outturn_cypservices.csv
Geographic levels: Local authority; National; Regional
Time period: 2015-16 to 2020-21
Content: This file contains details of expenditure on children's services, and young peoples services by local authorities collected via the Section 251 Outturn return.

Variable names and descriptions

Variable names and descriptions for this file are provided below:

Variable name	Variable description
description_of_expenditure	Category of expenditure - Filter by expenditure category
grants_inside_AEF	Grants inside of aggregate external finance (£ million)
grants_outside_AEF	Grants outside of aggregate external finance (£ million)
income	Income (£ million)
net_current_expenditure	Total net current expenditure (£ million)
net_revenue_expenditure	Net revenue expenditure (£ million)
other_public_sector_provision	Spend on other public sector provision (£ million)
own_provision	Spend on LAs own provision (£ million)
per_capita_net_current_spend	Per capita net current expenditure (£)
private_provision	Spend on private provision (£ million)
total_expenditure	Total gross expenditure (£ million)
voluntary_provision	Spend on voluntary provision (£ million)

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S251 Outturn - Schools and other education (National, Regional, LA levels)

Filename: s251outturn_schools_education.csv
Geographic levels: Local authority; National; Regional
Time period: 2015-16 to 2020-21
Content: This file contains details of school expenditure and other education and community expenditure by local authorities collected via the Section 251 Outturn return.

Variable names and descriptions

Variable names and descriptions for this file are provided below:

Variable name	Variable description
category_of_expenditure	Category of expenditure - Filter by expenditure category
early_years_establishments	Spend on early years establishments (£ million)
gross_expenditure	Total gross expenditure (£ million)
income	Income (£ million)
net_expenditure	Total net expenditure (£ million)
net_per_capita_expenditure	Per pupil net expenditure (£)
post_16	Spend on post 16 establishments (£ million)
primary_schools	Spend on primary schools (£ million)
pupil_referral_units_and_alt_provision	Spend on pupil referall units and AP (£ million)
secondary_schools	Spend on secondary schools (£ million)
sen_and_special_schools	Spend on special schools (£ million)

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Summary data for headline figures

Filename: overall_summary_data.csv
Geographic levels: National
Time period: 2015-16 to 2020-21
Content: This file contains a summary of the headline, national level figures for this publication.

Variable names and descriptions

Variable names and descriptions for this file are provided below:

Variable name	Variable description
expenditure_la_schools	Expenditure by local authority maintained schools (billion)
income_la_schools	Income of local authority maintained schools (billion)
Indicator	School or local authority
la_all	Total expenditure by local authorities on schools, childrens and young peoples services and other education and community (billion)
la_cyps	Total expenditure by local authorities on childrens and young peoples services (billion)
la_other	Total expenditure by local authorities on other education and community (billion)
la_schools	Total expenditure by local authorities on schools (billion)
pc_deficit	Percentage of local authority maintained schools in deficit

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