Financial year 2020-21

LA and school expenditure

Data guidance

Published

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 (opens in a new tab) and is intended to meet at least 3 stars for Open Data (opens in a new tab).

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 nameVariable description
expenditure_£millionExpenditure (£ million)
expenditure_descriptionCategory of expenditure
expenditure_per_pupilExpenditure per pupil
school_phasePhase of education - Filter by school type
Footnotes
  1. There are a small number of local authorities with no LA maintained secondary schools, all are academies.

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 nameVariable description
income_£millionIncome (£ million)
income_descriptionCategory of income
income_per_pupilIncome per pupil
school_phasePhase of education - Filter by school type
Footnotes
  1. There are a small number of local authorities with no LA maintained secondary schools, all are academies.

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 nameVariable description
average_revenue_balanceAverage revenue balance per school
B01_millionCommitted revenue balances (B01) (£ million)
B02_millionUncommitted revenue balances (B02) (£ million)
B03_millionDevolved formula capital balance (B03) (£ million)
B05_millionOther capital balances (B05) (£ million)
B06_millionCommunity-focused school revenue balances (B06) (£ million)
number_schoolsNumber of schools making a Consistent Financial Reporting (CFR) return
number_schools_with_deficitNumber of schools with a negative revenue balance
number_schools_with_surplusNumber of schools with a surplus revenue balance
OB01_millionOpening pupil-focused revenue balance (OB01) (£ million)
OB02_millionOpening community-focused revenue balance (OB02) (£ million)
OB03_millionOpening capital balance (OB03)(£ million)
PC_schools_with_deficitPercentage of schools with a negative revenue balance (deficit)
PC_schools_with_surplusPercentage of schools with a surplus revenue balance
revenue_balance_as_pc_total_incomeRevenue balance as a percentage of total income
school_over_threshold_av_per_schoolAverage surplus per school for schools over the threshold
school_over_threshold_pc_surplusPercentage of schools with a surplus over the threshold
school_phasePhase of education - Filter by school type
school_surplus_over_threshold_millionTotal surplus of schools over the threshold (£ million)
schools_surplus_over_thresholdNumber of schools with a surplus over the threshold
total_income_millionTotal income (£ million)
total_revenue_balance_millionTotal revenue balance (£ million)
total_revenue_reserve_schools_deficit_millionTotal revenue balance of schools with a deficit (£ million)
total_revenue_reserve_schools_surplus_millionTotal revenue balance of schools with a surplus (£ million)
Footnotes
  1. Includes schools making a part year return as they converted to academies part way through the financial year
  2. There are a small number of local authorities with no LA maintained secondary schools, all are academies.

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 nameVariable description
description_of_expenditureCategory of expenditure - Filter by expenditure category
grants_inside_AEFGrants inside of aggregate external finance (£ million)
grants_outside_AEFGrants outside of aggregate external finance (£ million)
incomeIncome (£ million)
net_current_expenditureTotal net current expenditure (£ million)
net_revenue_expenditureNet revenue expenditure (£ million)
other_public_sector_provisionSpend on other public sector provision (£ million)
own_provisionSpend on LAs own provision (£ million)
per_capita_net_current_spendPer capita net current expenditure (£)
private_provisionSpend on private provision (£ million)
total_expenditureTotal gross expenditure (£ million)
voluntary_provisionSpend on voluntary provision (£ million)

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 nameVariable description
category_of_expenditureCategory of expenditure - Filter by expenditure category
early_years_establishmentsSpend on early years establishments (£ million)
gross_expenditureTotal gross expenditure (£ million)
incomeIncome (£ million)
net_expenditureTotal net expenditure (£ million)
net_per_capita_expenditurePer pupil net expenditure (£)
post_16Spend on post 16 establishments (£ million)
primary_schoolsSpend on primary schools (£ million)
pupil_referral_units_and_alt_provisionSpend on pupil referall units and AP (£ million)
secondary_schoolsSpend on secondary schools (£ million)
sen_and_special_schoolsSpend on special schools (£ million)

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 nameVariable description
expenditure_la_schoolsExpenditure by local authority maintained schools (billion)
income_la_schoolsIncome of local authority maintained schools (billion)
IndicatorSchool or local authority
la_allTotal expenditure by local authorities on schools, childrens and young peoples services and other education and community (billion)
la_cypsTotal expenditure by local authorities on childrens and young peoples services (billion)
la_otherTotal expenditure by local authorities on other education and community (billion)
la_schoolsTotal expenditure by local authorities on schools (billion)
pc_deficitPercentage of local authority maintained schools in deficit