Education spending is the second-largest element of public service spending in the UK, representing about £91 billion in today’s prices or about 4.2% of national income.
Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats have pledged spending increases for schools, further education, and higher education in their manifestos, with Labour promising substantially higher sums. The Conservatives have pledged to reverse recent cuts to school spending and to spend more on further education. These spending plans come against the backdrop of very large changes in spending over the past 30 years. As the graph (Fig. 1) shows, spending per pupil is already higher at all levels of education than it was in the early 2000s. However, this increase in per-pupil funding has partially been reversed in the last five years, with falls in real funding across all levels.
Figure 1. Spending per pupil or student per year at different stages of education: actual and plans (2019–20 prices)
Detailed analysis across schools, further education and higher education
