Financial year 2023-24

Planned LA and school expenditure

Local authority (LA) spending plans for education, children's services and social care.

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2 updatesfor Financial year 2023-24

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9 data sets available for download

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  • Schools, other education and community - unrounded data

    Local authority, National, Regional

    This file contains the figures for planned expenditure on schools, other education and community categories for individual local authorities plus regional and national totals . Data is unrounded.

    Number of rows
    120,944
    Indicators
    • Early years establishments
    • Per capita net planned expenditure
    • Planned income
    Filters
    • Category of expenditure
    Time period
    2015-16 to 2023-24
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  • Schools, other education and community - national rounded summary

    National

    This file contains the national figures for planned expenditure on schools and other education. Data is rounded to the nearest million.

    Number of rows
    742
    Indicators
    • Early years establishments (£ million)
    • Per capita net planned expenditure
    • Planned income (£ million)
    Filters
    • Category of expenditure
    Time period
    2015-16 to 2023-24
    Data set information page for Schools, other education and community - national rounded summary
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  • Children's and young people's services - unrounded data

    Local authority, National, Regional

    This file contains the figures for planned expenditure on children's and young people's services for individual local authorities plus regional and national totals. Data is unrounded.

    Number of rows
    53,301
    Indicators
    • Early years establishments
    • Per capita net planned expenditure
    • Planned income
    Filters
    • Category of expenditure
    Time period
    2015-16 to 2023-24
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  • Children's and young people's services - national rounded summary

    National

    This file contains the national totals for planned expenditure on children's and young peoples services . Data is rounded to the nearest million.

    Number of rows
    327
    Indicators
    • Per capita net planned expenditure (£)
    • Planned income (£ millions)
    • Total gross planned expenditure (£ millions)
    Filters
    • Category of expenditure
    Time period
    2015-16 to 2023-24
    Data set information page for Children's and young people's services - national rounded summary
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  • Early years - unrounded data

    Local authority, National, Regional

    This file contains the figures for planned expenditure and places for early years for individual local authorities plus regional and national totals. Data is unrounded.

    Number of rows
    1,141
    Indicators
    • Average base rate for entitlement hours for 2 year olds (spend per hour)
    • Average base rate for entitlement hours for 3 and 4 year olds (spend per hour)
    • Average funding rate for 2 year olds (spend per hour)
    Time period
    2017-18 to 2023-24
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  • Early years - national rounded summary

    National

     This file contains the headline totals for each main category of planned expenditure and places for early years. Data is rounded to the nearest million.

    Number of rows
    7
    Indicators
    • Average base rate for entitlement hours for 2 year olds (spend per hour)
    • Average base rate for entitlement hours for 3 and 4 year olds (spend per hour)
    • Average funding rate for 2 year olds (spend per hour)
    Time period
    2017-18 to 2023-24
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  • High needs places and funding - rounded data

    Local authority, National, Regional

    This file contains the national totals for high needs place funding. Data is rounded to the nearest million.

    Number of rows
    1,425
    Indicators
    • Number of PRU places between April and August
    • Number of PRU places between September and March
    • Number of SEN places between April and August
    Time period
    2015-16 to 2023-24
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  • High needs places and funding - school data

    School

    The number of planned high needs places and the planned expenditure for individual schools. This includes SEN places (both mainstream and special), alternative provision and hospital education as reported by local authorities in England for the latest financial year.

    Number of rows
    1,559
    Indicators
    • Number of PRU places between April 2023 and August 2023
    • Number of PRU places between September 2023 and March 2024
    • Number of SEN places between April 2023 and August 2023
    Filters
    • School type
    Time period
    2023-24
    Data set information page for High needs places and funding - school data
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  • ANNEX - Headline facts and figures - 2023-24

    National

    This file contains the headline totals rounded the nearest billion.

    Number of rows
    1
    Indicators
    • Net planned expenditure per capita on children's and young peoples services
    • Net planned expenditure per capita on other education and community
    • Net planned expenditure per capita on schools budgets
    Time period
    2023-24
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Supporting files

Supporting files provide an area for teams to supply non-standard files for download by users where required.

1 supporting data file

  • Number of high needs places by school, updated December 2023

    This file contains the number of high needs places, pupil referral unit places and hospital school places by school. The number of places for the periods between April 2023 and August 2023 and September 2023 and March 2024 are shown, together with the total high needs funding for the financial year 2023-24. File updated 12 December 2023

    Download Number of high needs places by school, updated December 2023 (xlsx, 180 Kb)
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Data guidance

Description of the data sets included in this release, including information on data sources, coverage, quality and any data conventions used.

Description

This document describes the underlying data files included in the Planned LA and School Expenditure in England. 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: ‘Planned LA and school expenditure’ provides the latest information at national, regional and local level on the planned expenditure on schools, education and children's and young people's services by local authorities. The publication summarises the information that was collected via S251 Budget returns.

This publication includes information on:

  • Local authority planned spending on schools and other education. This includes a 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 planned spending on children's and young people's services. This includes a time-series giving the detailed breakdown of spending category including  sure start centres, children looked after, family services and  youth justice.
  • Local authority planned spend on early years education. This includes the planned spend on early years education for 2, 3 and 4 years olds, by category of spend plus the number of hours of early year education . 
  • High needs places. This includes the number of high needs places to be provided. It includes places in mainstream schools with resourced provision or SEN units, special schools, pupil referral units and hospital schools.  The total planned expenditure on these places is also included. 

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.
  • 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)
  • low = where a figure round to zero but is not zero. In the summary tables the figures presented are rounded to £million, “low” in these tables represents a figure of £4,999 or less. 
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Contact us

If you have a specific enquiry about Planned LA and school expenditure statistics and data:

Pupil and school finance data team

Email: finance.statistics@education.gov.uk
Contact name: School Workforce and Finance team

Press office

If you have a media enquiry:

Telephone: 020 7783 8300

Public enquiries

If you have a general enquiry about the Department for Education (DfE) or education:

Phone: 0370 000 2288

Opening times

Monday to Friday from 9.30am to 5.30pm (closed on bank holidays)

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