Funding, spending & building
It’s a common misconception that academies have more money than other state schools. However, what appears to be a larger budget received from central government, simply pays for the services no longer covered by the local authority whose remit they have left. Rather than look at the money received, we need to consider how it is spent.
Consistent Financial Reporting (CFR) data
The annual CFR dataset details explicitly – to the exact pounds and pence – the monies received and spent by each state school in England.
- Grant Funding (income)
- Self-Generated Income (income)
- Total Income (income)
- Teaching Staff (expenditure)
- Supply Teachers (expenditure)
- Education Support Staff (expenditure)
- Premises inc. staff costs (expenditure)
- Back Office & Administration (expenditure)
- Catering (expenditure)
- Other Staff Costs (expenditure)
- Energy (expenditure)
- Learning Resources exc. ICT (expenditure)
- ICT Learning Resources (expenditure)
- Bought in Professional Services – Curriculum (expenditure)
- Other Expenditure (expenditure)
- Total Gross Revenue Expenditure (expenditure)
Additionally, the School Revenue Balances file is published every January, detailing how much of a school’s budget is not spent or committed for the remainder of the academic year.
Pupil Premium & Pupil Deprivation funding
Free School Meals offer valuable daytime nutrition to pupils from more deprived backgrounds, but it is also widely acknowledged that such deprivation brings additional learning challenges. Consequently, the coalition government introduced the Pupil Premium from 2011/12 to provide a fixed sum for each qualifying pupil that would be paid to the school to aid their educational needs. For 2018/19, this was £935-1,320 per FSM pupil and £2,300 for LAC. Although this money is not technically ring-fenced, schools must demonstrate to Ofsted that their funding allocation is spent to the educational benefit of the pupils for whom it is intended to aid.
We also hold Scottish FSM data and the equivalent Pupil Deprivation Grant allocations for schools in Wales.
Bricks & mortarboards
When the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition scrapped Labour’s Building Schools for the Future (BSF) scheme, only 261 schools were named in the replacement Priority School Building Programme (PSBP). However, an April 2019 announcement detailed PSBP projects involving 500 schools across England, 3,000 schools that have benefited from 6,000 projects supported by the Condition Improvement Fund along with £200m from Devolved Capital Formula funding for smaller capital projects.