However, any hopes of further investment in the schools budget were dashed when education did not feature in the chancellor’s Spring Budget on March 6.
New analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (Sibieta, 2024) projects that school costs will rise by about 5% in 2024/25, while funding per-pupil is currently due to rise by just under 4%.
The analysis sets out how total school spending per-pupil fell by 9% in real terms between 2009/10 and 2019/20 – the “largest and most sustained cut in school spending per-pupil in England in at least 40 years”.
Since 2019/20, there have been significant rises which the analysis says is likely to lead to a 9.5% real-terms increase between 2019/20 and 2024/25.
However, a return to per-pupil spending levels last seen in 2010 is under threat due to continuing high levels of inflation which are hitting schools particularly hard.
The core schools budget in England is currently set to be about £60bn in 2024/25, which includes day-to-day or current school spending on pupils aged 5 to 16. The IFS analysis says that an additional £700m will be needed to compensate for rising costs.
While standard measures of inflation predict a 2% rise in 2024/25, the analysis says that the “reality for schools is likely to be much harder”.
The IFS projection of a 5% rise in costs for schools is based on a range of factors, including the 6.5% teacher pay award spilling over into the 2024/25 financial year (from April 2024), large rises in support staff pay, on-going spikes in food and energy costs, an assumed teacher pay award of 3% in September, and other costs increasing in line with projected CPI inflation for 2024/25 of 3%.
On top of this, the analysis doesn’t take into account a “large drop” in school capital spending of about 26% in real terms since 2009.
The analysis has little patience for the government’s claim that school and per-pupil funding are at record highs. It states: “Such claims are, to put it mildly, unhelpful to public debate. Prior to 2010, school funding per-pupil was at a record high almost every year. The fact that this has not been the case since 2010 just reflects the fact that we saw a historically high real-terms cut in school spending per-pupil of 9% between 2010 and 2019.
“The actual costs faced by schools in 2024/25 are likely to grow at a faster rate (about 5%) than total school funding per-pupil (less than 4%). As a result, the purchasing power of school budgets is likely to fall by 1% in 2024/25.
“On current projections, we expect that the purchasing power of school funding per-pupil will still be 5% below 2010 levels in 2024. If the government wanted to go even further and compensate schools for this 5% loss … it would require a total of £3.2bn in extra funding.”
However, chancellor Jeremy Hunt did not mention education during his Spring Budget statement on March 6 other than to announce £105m over three years to build new special schools.
The Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) said that the budget had “failed to support schools and the children and young people they serve”, pointing to a recent Department for Education technical note on school costs projecting that school budgets in the next financial year will only allow for a maximum increase in spending of £600m or 1.2% (DfE, 2024).
Commenting on the IFS analysis, Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said that the analysis “shows the reality behind the government’s rhetoric about ‘record funding’ of schools”.
He continued: “Schools are actually much less well funded than they were in 2010 when funding is set against rising costs. As a result, they have already had to make very difficult decisions about the amount of pastoral support and curriculum options they are able to provide, and what they can afford in terms of IT equipment, classroom resources and routine maintenance.
“Many of these issues are even worse in post-16 education which has been even more poorly funded. Meanwhile, capital budgets have been so severely cut since 2010 that many parts of the school estate are falling apart and are riddled with asbestos and crumbling concrete. And SEN provision is in crisis with the level of need much greater than the available resources.”
- DfE: Guidance: Schools’ costs: technical note, February 2024: www.gov.uk/government/publications/schools-costs-technical-note
- Sibieta: The latest picture on school funding and costs in England, IfS, March 2024: https://ifs.org.uk/articles/latest-picture-school-funding-and-costs-england