Financial year 2024-25

Planned LA and school expenditure

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

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• Produced by: Department for Education
• Published: 26 September 2024
• Last updated: 9 May 2025

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• Featured tables

  Featured tables are pre-prepared tables created from a statistical release's data sets. They provide statistics that are regularly requested by users and can be adapted to switch between different categories.

• Data sets: download or create tables

  Data sets present comprehensive open data from which users can create their own tables using the EES table tool or download a zipped CSV file.

• Supporting files

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

• Data guidance

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

• Data catalogue

  Alternatively use our data catalogue to search and filter for specific data sets from this release or our entire library, providing full data summaries, data previews and access to API data sets.

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Featured tables

Featured tables are pre-prepared tables created from a statistical release's data sets. They provide statistics that are regularly requested by some users (such as local councils, regional government or government policy teams) and can be adapted to switch between different categories (such as different geographies, time periods or characteristics where available).

6 featured tables

• Table 1: Planned expenditure on schools, by category of expenditure, and phase of school, England, financial year 2024-25.

  This table contains details of the planned expenditure, on the total schools budget, for each school phase and category of expenditure, for the financial year 2024-25. Data is unrounded.

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• Table 2: Total planned gross and net expenditure, plus net expenditure per pupil for each LA in England, for the total schools budget, financial years 2015-16 to 2024-25

  This table shows the total planned gross expenditure, total net expenditure and net expenditure per pupil for the total planned expenditure on the schools budget, for each local authority in England, for the financial year s 2015-16 to 2024-25

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• Table 3: Planned expenditure on other education and community, by category of expenditure and phase of school, England, financial year 2024-25

  This table contains details of the planned expenditure, on the total other education and community budget, for each school phase and category of expenditure, for the financial year 2024-25. Data is unrounded.

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• Table 4: Total gross expenditure, net expenditure, plus net expenditure per pupil for the other education and community budget, for each local authority in England, financial years 2015-16 to 2024-25

  This table shows the total planned gross expenditure, total net expenditure and net expenditure per pupil for the total planned expenditure on the other education and community budget, for each local authority in England, for the financial year s 2015-16 to 2024-25

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• Table 5: Planned expenditure, income and per capita expenditure, by category, on children's and young peoples services, England, 2024-25

  This table contains details of the planned expenditure, on the total children's and young peoples services budget, for each school phase and category of expenditure, for the financial year 2024-25. Data is unrounded.

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• Table 6: Total planned gross expenditure, net expenditure and net expenditure per capita, for children's and young peoples services, England, 2015-16 to 2024-25

  This table shows the total planned gross expenditure, total net expenditure and net expenditure per pupil for the total planned expenditure on the children's and young peoples services budget, for each local authority in England, for the financial year s 2015-16 to 2024-25

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Data sets: download or create tables

Data sets present comprehensive open data from which users can create their own tables using the EES table tool or download a zipped CSV file.

10 data sets available for download

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• Planned expenditure on schools budget plus other education and community budget (unrounded data)

  Local authority, National, Regional

  This file contains the actual figures for planned expenditure for the schools budget and for the other education and community budget. Data is shown for individual local authorities and also includes unrounded regional and national totals.

  • Number of rows: 134,884
  • Indicators:
    • Early years establishments
    • Post 16 establishments
    • Primary schools
  • Filters:
    • Category of expenditure
  • Time period: 2015-16 to 2024-25

  Data set information page
  Create table

• Planned expenditure on schools budget plus other education and community budget (National rounded data - £ millions)

  National

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

  • Number of rows: 827
  • Indicators:
    • Early years establishments (£ million)
    • Post 16 establishments (£ million)
    • Primary schools (£ million)
  • Filters:
    • Category of expenditure
  • Time period: 2015-16 to 2024-25

  Data set information page
  Create table

• Planned expenditure on the children's and young people's services budget (unrounded data)

  Local authority, National, Regional

  This file contains the actual figures for planned expenditure on children's and young peoples services. Data is shown for individual local authorities and also includes unrounded regional and national totals.

  • Number of rows: 59,369
  • Indicators:
    • Early years establishments
    • Planned income
    • Post 16 establishments
  • Filters:
    • Category of expenditure
  • Time period: 2015-16 to 2024-25

  Data set information page
  Create table

• Planned expenditure on the children's and young people's services budget (National rounded data - £ millions)

  National

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

  • Number of rows: 364
  • Indicators:
    • Planned income (£ millions)
    • Total gross planned expenditure (£ millions)
    • Total net planned expenditure (£ millions)
  • Filters:
    • Category of expenditure
  • Time period: 2015-16 to 2024-25

  Data set information page
  Create table

• Headline totals and per capita headline figures

  National

  This file contains the headline totals rounded the nearest billion. Figures are shown at national level only.

  • Number of rows: 67
  • Indicators:
    • Net planned expenditure per capita
    • Total gross planned expenditure (£ billion)
    • Total net planned expenditure (£ billion)
  • Filters:
    • Category of planned expenditure
  • Time period: 2015-16 to 2024-25

  Data set information page
  Create table

• Planned expenditure on the early years budget (unrounded data)

  Local authority, National, Regional

  This file contains the actual figures for planned expenditure on early years, including information on the planned number of hours of early years education. Data is shown for individual local authorities and also includes unrounded regional and national totals.

  • Number of rows: 1,306
  • 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 base rate for entitlement hours for children aged 9 months to 2 years old (spend per hour)
  • Time period: 2017-18 to 2024-25

  Data set information page
  Create table

• Planned expenditure on the early years budget (National rounded data - £ millions)

  National

  This file contains the national figures for planned expenditure early years including information on the planned number of hours of early years education. Data is shown rounded to the nearest million.

  • Number of rows: 8
  • 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 base rate for entitlement hours for children aged 9 months to 2 years old (spend per hour)
  • Time period: 2017-18 to 2024-25

  Data set information page
  Create table

• Planned expenditure on high needs places (unrounded data)

  Local authority, National, Regional

  This file contains the actual figures for planned expenditure on and number of places for high needs. Data is shown for individual local authorities and also includes unrounded regional and national totals.

  • Number of rows: 1,583
  • 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 2024-25

  Data set information page
  Create table

• Planned expenditure on high needs places (National rounded data - £ millions)

  National

  This file contains the national figures for planned expenditure on and number of places for high needs. Data is shown rounded to the nearest million.

  • Number of rows: 10
  • 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 2024-25

  Data set information page
  Create table

• High needs places and funding by school

  School

  This file contains school level information on the number of planned places and the planned expenditure for high needs places.

  • Number of rows: 1,596
  • 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
  • Filters:
    • School type
  • Time period: 2024-25

  Data set information page
  Create table

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Supporting files

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

2 supporting data files

• Number of high needs places by school

  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 2024 and August 2024 and September 2024 and March 2025 are shown, together with the total high needs funding for the financial year 2024-25.

  Download (csv, 283 Kb)

• Early years planned expenditure

  This file contains the number total number of hours, plus the anticipated total spend for each category of early years expenditure. It includes private, voluntary and independent early years providers, maintained nursery schools and maintained primary or secondary schools with nursery classes. This is the national total for information collected from local authorities via the early years proforma, further information on this can be found in the guidance here - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/section-251-2024-to-2025/section-251-budget-guidance#the-early-years-collection-and-the-proforma

  Download (csv, 7 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 by provider. 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)
• <£5,000 - in the summary tables the figures presented are rounded to the nearest £million, and rounded to 2 decimal places. In these tables <£5,000 represents a figure of £4,999 or under. 

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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

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If you have a media enquiry:

Telephone: 020 7783 8300

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

Phone: 0370 000 2288

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