This publication provides statistics on school revenue funding from financial year 2010 to 2011 through to 2022 to 2023.
The aim is to provide an overview of trends in school funding over recent years, as well as detailed information about funding allocations for individual schools for 2021 to 2022.
The total amount of funding allocated to English schools for 5-16 year old pupils has grown since 2010-11 as the total pupil population has also grown.
In cash terms, the total funding allocated to schools through the grants covered in this report is £53.5 billion in 2022-23, an increase of 53% compared to the £35.0 billion allocated in 2010-11. The Spending Review outcome means funding will increase further in 2023-24 and 2024-25.
On a per-pupil basis the total funding allocated to schools for 5-16 year old pupils, in cash terms, in 2022-23 was £6,970, a 35% increase compared to £5,180 allocated per pupil in 2010-11.
When adjusted for inflation, funding per pupil was broadly flat between 2010-11 and 2015-16 at just under £6,400 in 2021-22 prices. It then fell by 4.0% over 2016-17 and 2017-18, but subsequently increased by 1.4% over 2018-19 and 2019-20. Since then, funding increased by 4.5% over the course of 2020-21 and 2021-22 and then by a further 4.2% in 2022-23, reaching £6,780 (in 2021-22 prices).
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Table showing allocations to individual state-funded schools in England for 2021-22
In this publication
Throughout this release, the time periods referred to are financial years unless otherwise stated. The shorthand “2021-22” is used to denote the 2021 to 2022 financial year (i.e. the period from April 2021 to March 2022), and similarly for other years. The shorthand “2021/22” is used to denote the 2021 to 2022 academic year (i.e. the period from September 2021 to August 2022), and similarly for other years.
This publication contains two sets of data:
All this data relates to the funding that is allocated to local authorities and state-funded schools by the Department for Education (DfE) in each year.
This is not the same as the amount of money that is spent in a year by schools and local authorities. Other official statistics reports published by the department provide information on local authority and school spending on education, including academies and children and young people's services. These can be found on gov.uk at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-local-authority-school-finance-data (opens in a new tab).
The Methodology section provides much more detailed information about each of the datasets.
Feedback
This is the third edition of this annual statistics report and we are keen to receive feedback on the data presented. If you have any feedback or comments on this publication please contact us at: schoolfunding.statistics@education.gov.uk.
Introduction
This section presents time series data on revenue funding for primary and secondary pupils aged 5-16 in England.
The funding covers all state-funded schools: that is, primary and secondary maintained schools and academies; special schools; pupil referral units (including alternative provision academies and free schools); local authority alternative provision; and non-maintained special schools.
For mainstream schools, funding covers pupils in reception through to year 11.
Important note on GDP deflators
To calculate inflation-adjusted school funding figures in this report, we use the GDP deflator, for which the most recent figures were published in January 2022 by HM Treasury (HMT).
The GDP deflator is the broadest measure of inflation in the domestic economy. While price inflation experienced by individual schools may be different, the GDP deflator is commonly used to indicate price changes in public sector expenditure and is the most suitable for this national-level time series.
The series displays atypical year-on-year movement in the data for years 2020-21 and 2021-22, which has arisen as a result of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The deflator series indicates like-for-like price increases of 5.27% over the two year period overall, equivalent to increases of 2.60% in each year.
Given the atypical year-on-year movement in the deflator data, we have considered inflation-adjusted changes over that two-year period as a whole, rather than for each of the individual years, and the commentary in this publication is written from that standpoint.
Coverage of the figures
The following funding elements in 2022-23 are included in the figures:
This coverage has been chosen both to capture core funding for schools and to ensure the series is as comparable over time as possible, despite changes to the specific grants allocated to schools over the years shown.
In this publication, the figures for 2010-11 to 2021-22 are based on the latest funding allocations that have been issued to schools and local authorities. The figures for 2021-22 in last year’s report were based on the budgets that were agreed and announced as part of the 2019 Spending Round; they have now been updated with allocations data. The figures for 2022-23 are based on a combination of published funding allocations, the budget settlement agreed at the 2021 Spending Review, and some estimates of small grant and high needs spending.
Note that the figures do not include any funding allocated to schools to support them with responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. More information on funding provided to schools for the pandemic can be found in the Annex.
More detailed information on the funding covered by the figures in this section can be found in the Methodology section.
Total funding 2010-11 to 2022-23
The total amount of funding allocated to English schools for 5-16 year olds is closely linked to the number of pupils in attendance, and has grown since 2010-11 as the total pupil population has also grown.
In cash terms, the total funding allocated to schools through the grants listed above was £53.5 billion in 2022-23, an increase of 53% compared to the £35.0 billion allocated in 2010-11.
Per-pupil funding 2010-11 to 2022-23
On a per-pupil basis the total funding to be allocated to schools for 5-16 year olds, in cash terms, in 2022-23 is £6,970, a 35% increase compared to £5,180 allocated per pupil in 2010-11.
After adjusting for inflation, funding per pupil was broadly flat between 2010-11 and 2015-16 at just under £6,400 in 2021-22 prices.
It then fell by 4.0% over 2016-17 and 2017-18, but subsequently increased by 1.4% over 2018-19 and 2020-21. Since then, funding increased by 4.5% over the course of 2020-21 and 2021-22 and then by a further 4.2% in 2022-23, reaching £6,780 (in 2021-22 prices).
Funding for 2023-24 and later years
Taking account of some small differences in coverage, these figures are comparable to the three-year school funding settlement announced in the 2021 Spending Review, which covers the financial years 2022-23 to 2024-25.
The 2021 Spending Review confirmed an additional £4.7 billion by 2024-25 for the core schools budget in England, over and above the 2019 Spending Round settlement for schools in 2022-23. This includes an additional £1.6 billion for schools and high needs in 2022-23, over 2021-22 levels, on top of the £2.4 billion increase already announced as part of the 2019 Spending Round. Core schools funding will reach £53.8 billion in 2022-23, £55.3 billion in 2023-24 and £56.8 billion in 2024-25.
NB: The time series figure for 2022-23 is slightly lower than the core schools budget at the Spending Review 2021. This is because the time series figures exclude TPG, TPECG and schools supplementary grant funding for early years and post-16 provision. The time series figures also do not include COVID-19 recovery and school resource management funding. Please see the Methodology section for more information on the scope and coverage of these statistics.
Coverage of the data
The data presented in this section is contained in the data file associated with this release entitled “Revenue funding to state-funded schools, 2021-22”. This can be found higher up this page by selecting ‘Explore data and files’ and then ‘List of all supporting files’.
The data shows the total funding that has been allocated to each individual mainstream school through several different funding streams for 2021-22. This covers funding allocated to mainstream schools for their running costs for pupils aged 5-16, that was provided through some of the funding streams covered in the other main section of this report, “School revenue funding for 5-16 year olds for 2010-11 to 2022-23”:
The school funding allocations data also includes several other funding streams for schools that are not included in the figures in the previous section. This funding is provided to schools for specific functions and pupils of other ages in attendance. Detailed school allocations through these funding streams have been previously published for 2021-22, but they are included here to show schools’ data in a single place:
Funding years
For core funding, the data shows financial year 2021-22 allocations for local authority maintained schools, and academic year 2021/22 allocations for academies (including free schools). This is because these are the time periods for which maintained schools and academies receive their budgets.
For the other grants, the data primarily shows allocations for financial year 2021-22. More information about this data and the different elements of funding presented is provided in the Methodology section.
Consistency with the 2010-11 to 2022-23 time series data
The totals of the figures in this section do not match those for 2021-22 shown in the previous section, for several reasons.
First, the figures presented in this section relate to mainstream schools only, whereas the previous section also includes funding for age 5-16 pupils attending other types of institution, such as special schools, non-maintained special schools and alternative provision settings.
Second, these school-level figures for 2021-22 include some funding (the PE and sport premium and universal infant free school meals) which are not included in the previous section, for the reasons explained above.
Schools included in the data
Please note that schools listed in the data are as at 31 March 2021.
Other publications
For years prior to 2019-20, these data were published by ESFA in a separate annual report ‘Schools block funding allocations’. However, those previous reports presented data for core funding and the teachers’ pay grant only. The more recent school funding statistics reports also include data on schools’ allocations for the pupil premium, TPECG, PE and sport premium and UIFSM.
Comparison with national funding formula data
The figures presented here are the funding schools received in 2021-22. These are not the same as illustrative allocations under the national funding formula (NFF) in 2021-22 that the DfE has previously published.
The NFF is a single, national formula which calculates a notional allocation for all mainstream schools in England based on their pupils’ needs and characteristics. However, schools’ NFF allocations for 2021-22 were in most cases not exactly the same as the funding they actually received.
For each local authority in England, the schools NFF calculates overall per-pupil amounts at primary and secondary level, which are then multiplied by the latest pupil numbers to give a total allocation to the authority. Each local authority then determines schools’ final allocations for the year through setting a local funding formula.
It is schools’ final funding as indicated by their authority’s local formula which is shown in this report.
Types of schools
The data shows figures for 20,153 mainstream schools in England. Of these, 11,289 are maintained schools, meaning that they are overseen by the local authority, and 8,864 are academies, meaning they operate independently of local authority control and receive their funding directly from the ESFA.
Core funding
The basic entitlement factor in authorities’ local formula gives every school a basic amount of funding for every pupil, and authorities could specify different per-pupil amounts for primary age pupils, for pupils in key stage 3 (years 7 to 9), and for pupils in key stage 4 (years 10 and 11).
Differences between schools’ basic entitlement funding reflect where they had different numbers of pupils and where their respective local authorities decided to set different per-pupil rates in their 2021-22 local formulae.
In their local formula, authorities could also choose to use several other ‘pupil-led factors’ – these are factors where the amount of funding a school receives depends on the number of pupils with appropriate characteristics that attend the school. Descriptions of each factor can be found in the Methodology section.
Figure 2.1 shows the percentage of schools receiving funding in 2021-22 through each of these other pupil-led factors. For low prior attainment, all local authorities used this factor in their local formula, but a very small number of schools did not have any pupils eligible to attract this funding.
Differences in the amount of funding that schools received through the pupil-led factors in 2021-22 were due to several reasons: such as where schools had different numbers of pupils who were eligible to attract funding through the factor, and where the local authority set different per-pupil rates in their local formula (or chose not to use the factor in their formula at all).
The DfE already publishes a large amount of information about funding allocated to schools. This section indicates where some of this further information can be found.
National funding formula for schools
Since 2018-19, school funding has been distributed according to a formula based on the individual needs and characteristics of every school in England. In 2021-22, the national funding formula (NFF) was used to determine the total schools block funding for each local authority, but local authorities continued to be responsible for distributing that money between the schools in their area using a locally-agreed formula.
The school-level figures presented in this report are schools’ final funding allocations, calculated using their respective local formulae. More information about the schools NFF in 2021-22 can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-funding-formula-tables-for-schools-and-high-needs-2021-to-2022. (opens in a new tab)
In many cases the final allocations presented here will differ slightly from the NFF figures for 2021-22, including because the latter are based on schools’ pupil counts and characteristics from an earlier period (as explained in more detail in the previous chapter).
Pupil premium
Details of pupil premium funding to schools in 2021-22 can be found here (opens in a new tab).
PE and sport premium
Details of PE and sport premium funding allocated in 2021-22 can be found here (opens in a new tab).
Universal infant free school meals
More information about universal infant free school meals funding for academic year 2021/22 can be found here (opens in a new tab).
Coronavirus (COVID-19) recovery premium funding
Details of Recovery premium funding to schools in 2021-22 can be found here (opens in a new tab).
School-led tutoring grant
Details of School-led tutoring grant funding to schools can be found here (opens in a new tab).
Data on school spending
While this report focuses on funding provided for schools, the department already publishes official statistics reports on how schools and local authorities spent their funding on education, children's services and social care. These can be found here (opens in a new tab).
Other data
Data on trends in school spending is published by the IFS as part of their annual report on all education spending, but is not directly comparable to our time series on funding, primarily due to different coverage. Their 2021 report can be found here (opens in a new tab).
PESA data is published by HM Treasury and can be found here (opens in a new tab).
Introduction
We recognise that schools have faced some additional pressures as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Government has put in place a range funding measures to support schools during the COVID-19 outbreak, with the intention that these are temporary and targeted to support schools through the period of disruption. The response to the pandemic is ongoing, and we continue to support schools with targeted funding. This information is therefore correct at time of publication.
The data on school revenue funding for 5-16 year olds for 2010-11 to 2022-23 presented in the main body of this report does not include funding allocated to schools to support them with their response to COVID-19. This is because the inclusion of this time-limited funding to support schools would cause inconsistencies in the time series. However, the data showing individual school funding allocations for 2021-22 does include two funding streams provided to schools to support their COVID-19 response: Coronavirus (COVID-19) recovery premium funding and the school-led tutoring grant.
This section gives more detail on the COVID-19 funding provided to schools.
COVID funding to schools
During the pandemic, some schools will have faced reduced costs due to periods of reduced pupil attendance, while there will be other instances where schools will have faced additional costs.
Nationally schools in England will receive extra funding, over and above core school funding, to support their response to the pandemic. This was shown in the National Audit Office report on school funding in England published in 2021, which can be found at https://www.nao.org.uk/report/school-funding-in-england/ (opens in a new tab), and has been summarised below, along with more recent announcements on support for schools.
This summary covers funding made available to schools to help with increased pressures due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, this is not an exhaustive list of practical support schools have received due to the pandemic. For example, the Government has:
Funding for exceptional costs and unplanned staff costs
Between March and July 2020, schools were eligible to claim for exceptional costs funding provided they were not adding to their reserves, up to limits depending on the size and type of school. Schools could claim for three categories of spend:
During this period, 72% of schools submitted claims, with reimbursements totalling £139 million.
In November 2020 the Government announced the COVID-19 workforce fund to help schools meet the cost of staff absences incurred in November and December 2020. Schools received a total of £6 million reimbursements.
The COVID-19 workforce fund was re-introduced in November 2021 to provide financial support for eligible schools and colleges for absence costs incurred from 22 November until the end of the autumn term 2021, and from the start of the spring term 2022 until the February half term in 2022.
During the lockdown period in January to March 2021, schools were also eligible to apply for additional funds to help schools meet the free school meals criteria at home for the period 4 January 2021 up to the start of the Easter holidays where they were not using the national voucher scheme. Schools received a total of £50 million reimbursements.
In addition, secondary schools, colleges and specialist settings could access funding to support them with the workforce costs associated with delivering on-site testing. Payments have been made directly and retrospectively by the ESFA, based on testing data reported through Test and Trace. The department also provided an exceptional claims process, alongside automatic allocations, acknowledging that there will be costs incurred by some institutions for mass testing on return to schools, that would not be appropriate to fund via a formulaic allocation to all schools and colleges.
Schools and colleges have so far received around £200 million to support of on-site testing, covering the period 4 January 2021 to 17 September 2021.
Funding to support pupil catch-up
Since June 2020, we have announced nearly £5 billion of direct investment for education recovery to support children and young people to catch up on missed learning. This additional funding has been announced in four tranches.
In June 2020, the government announced £1 billion of funding for education recovery, which includes:
In February 2021, a further £700 million recovery package was announced, including:
In June 2021, the Government announced a further £1.4 billion to boost education recovery including:
At the 2021 Spending Review, the Government announced an additional £1 billion Recovery Premium to support disadvantaged pupils in all state-funded primary and secondary schools. The additional premium is to cover the academic years 2022/23 and 2023/24.
Also in October 2021, the Government announced £800 million to be allocated across the period 2022-23 to 2024-25 to ensure all 16-19 students will benefit from an additional 40 hours of education across the academic year - this equates to around one additional hour a week in school or college.
Sources
Exceptional costs funding guidance - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-financial-support-for-schools/school-funding-exceptional-costs-associated-with-coronavirus-covid-19-for-the-period-march-to-july-2020 (opens in a new tab)
Workforce fund guidance - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-workforce-fund-for-schools (opens in a new tab)
Mass testing allocations - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-mass-testing-funding-for-schools-and-colleges (opens in a new tab)
June 2020 announcement - https://www.gov.uk/government/news/billion-pound-covid-catch-up-plan-to-tackle-impact-of-lost-teaching-time (opens in a new tab)
Catch up premium allocations - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-catch-up-premium-provisional-allocations (opens in a new tab)
February 2021 announcement - https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-education-recovery-package-for-children-and-young-people (opens in a new tab)
Recovery premium allocations - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-recovery-premium-funding-allocations (opens in a new tab)
Summer schools guidance - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/summer-schools-programme (opens in a new tab)
June 2021 announcement - https://www.gov.uk/government/news/huge-expansion-of-tutoring-in-next-step-of-education-recovery (opens in a new tab)
School led tutoring guidance - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-led-tutoring-conditions-of-grant (opens in a new tab)
October 2021 announcement - https://www.gov.uk/government/news/all-schools-and-colleges-to-receive-extra-funding-for-catch-up (opens in a new tab)
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