Schools

In the Autumn Budget 2024, the new government chose to increase school spending by £2.3 billion, with the core schools budget increasing in cash terms from £61.6 billion in 2024–25 to £63.9 billion in 2025–26. This allows for a 1.6% real-terms increase in spending per pupil. Coming on the back of an 11% real-terms increase in spending per pupil between 2019–20 and 2024–25, this allows spending per pupil to return to, and exceed, its previous high point in 2010. This is not the full story, however. 

Out of the £2.3 billion cash-terms rise in the core schools budget in 2025–26, about £1 billion is focused on the high needs budget, which covers pupils with the highest levels of special educational needs (SEN) and disabilities. After accounting for this, the £1.3 billion rise in the rest of the schools budget is likely to amount to a 2.8% rise in cash terms in funding per pupil in mainstream schools in 2025–26, which is a very small real-terms rise relative to economy-wide inflation of 2.4%. In contrast, we estimate that school costs are likely to rise by about 3.6%, which includes the effect of government proposals for a 2.8% pay rise. If these projections are accurate, then core school budgets will feel very tight in 2025–26. 

Total school spending per pupil

Figure 1 shows total school spending per pupil aged 3–19 between 2003–04 and 2024–25 broken down into four different components:

• Funding allocated to schools. This includes funding directly allocated to schools and early years providers. Early year funding for children aged 3–4 is included in primary school budgets for past years. We cannot exclude this for all years, so we include early years funding for children aged 3–4 in all years to maintain consistency. This includes funding for special schools and alternative provision. It also includes high needs top-ups and place-funding provided to state-funded mainstream and special schools.
• Local authority spending. This includes central spending on a range of services for pupils with SEN, admissions, transport and other services.
• Sixth-form funding. This is funding provided to schools for pupils aged 16–19. We include this given that it is often included within total secondary school expenditure figures.
• Extra funding for employer pension contributions. From September 2019, schools received about £1.5 billion in extra funding to meet the cost of higher employer pension contributions. From April 2024, they were provided with a further £1.1 billion to cover another increase in employer pension contributions. We often present figures with and without this extra funding for comparisons over time as the funding was directly intended to compensate schools for higher costs.

Combining all these factors, we calculate total school spending as nearly £70 billion in 2024–25, or nearly £73 billion if we include all recent employer pension contribution grants. This is higher than the core schools budget for England presented by the government, which was £61.6 billion in 2024–25 (this covers school funding for pupils aged 5–16). This can be mostly explained by the fact that we include £3 billion in post-16 funding and over £4 billion in early years funding, as well as additional services provided by local authorities that are funded through the wider local government settlement. However, as we shall show directly below, our measure appears to show faster growth in total school spending per pupil in 2024–25 than the core schools budget on what should be an equivalent basis.

In 2003–04 (the earliest year for which we can produce this consistent set of figures), total school spending stood at about £6,500 per pupil in 2024–25 prices. This rose by 23% in real terms up to 2009–10, reaching a high point of £8,000 per pupil. After 2009–10, spending per pupil fell by 9% in real terms to reach £7,300 in 2019–20, taking spending per pupil back to around the level last seen around 2006. 

Up to 2009–10, each of the components rose by similar amounts. After 2009–10, the different components evolved very differently. Per-pupil funding provided to schools rose by around 4% in real terms between 2009–10 and 2019–20. In contrast, local authority spending on services fell by 57% over the same period. A large part of this contrasting pattern is mechanical, reflecting a transfer of funding and responsibilities from local authorities to both academies and maintained schools. There was also a big drop in sixth-form funding. As we show in our analysis of further education, school sixth-form funding per pupil fell 28% over this period. 

Since 2019–20, school spending per pupil has begun to grow again in real terms. Between 2019–20 and 2024–25, we estimate that spending per pupil grew by more than 11% in real terms. This results from an £8 billion increase in total school spending over these five years, as well as the £1.1 billion extra in July 2024 to cover the costs of the 2024 teacher and support staff pay awards, over and above what schools could already have afforded. 

As shown in Figure 2, this already takes total school spending per pupil in 2024–25 back to the level of its most recent high point in 2009–10. In the Autumn Budget 2024, the government announced a £2.3 billion increase in school spending for 2025–26. This amounts to a 1.6% real-terms increase in spending per pupil, and would take spending per pupil about 3% above its previous high point in 2010.

Figure 2 also shows the growth in school spending per pupil if spending per pupil exactly followed the growth in the national core schools budget (excluding pensions grants). Up to 2022–23, the two series are relatively close together. For 2024–25, we see a significant gap. Our measure of total school spending per pupil increases by 5% in real terms, or by £3 billion in 2024–25 prices. In contrast, the core schools budget increased by £1.5 billion (excluding pension grants) or about a 3% rise in spending per pupil in real terms. 

As shown in Figure 3, this drives a large difference in growth in spending per pupil across the two measures between 2019–20 and 2024–25. We see 11.5% real-terms growth in our measure based on total planned school spending by local authorities (excluding the pensions grants), which compares with 8.0% real-terms growth in the core schools budget in per pupil terms (also excluding pensions grants). These figures are naturally higher if we include the effect of the £2.6 billion in pension grants (combining grants that began in September 2019 and April 2024).

Given that the core schools budget only covers pupils aged 5–16, it is important to narrow planned spending by local authorities down to the same age group (which we can do for recent years, but not for earlier years). This reduces the real-terms growth in total planned spending on schools down to 10.9%, which is still 2.9 percentage points higher than the 8% growth in the core schools budget per pupil.

In the final set of bars, we exclude high needs funding from central government and planned high needs spending by local authorities. This reduces the gap in growth rates slightly to 2.6 percentage points, reflecting the faster growth in planned spending than in funding. However, this analysis also shows the importance of the growing cost of high needs provision in explaining trends in funding and spending. After accounting for growth in high needs funding, the growth in funding per pupil drops from 8.0% to 2.9%. Similarly, the growth in planned spending per pupil drops from 10.9% to 5.5%. As such, the growth in the cost of high needs provision can explain over half of the growth in funding and spending between 2019–20 and 2024–25. It may also explain why schools leaders might have still felt a squeeze on mainstream school budgets despite large apparent growth in total funding per pupil. 

Average spending by primary and secondary schools

Figure 4 shows our estimates for the level of primary and secondary school spending per pupil in England from the late 1970s through to 2022–23 (in 2024–25 prices), together with projections up to 2025–26. Real-terms changes are shown relative to the GDP deflator. Actual figures up to 2022–23 are based on spending levels by individual schools, which excludes spending undertaken by local authorities and spending on special schools. As a direct result, growth in spending per pupil during the 2000s and 2010s is higher than in Figure 1. This is because funding (and the responsibility for delivering various functions) was moved from local authorities to individual schools. Projections are based on underlying growth in mainstream school funding per pupil (i.e. the core schools budget minus high needs and pensions grants).

We see that spending per pupil has evolved in a number of distinct phases: 

• Modest growth over the 1980s and 1990s. Under the period of Conservative government between 1979 and 1997, real-terms spending per pupil rose by about 1.4% per year in primary schools, and by about 1% per year in secondary schools.
• Rapid growth over the 2000s. From 1999 onwards, spending per pupil grew rapidly. As a result, we see that primary school spending per pupil grew by about 5.9% per year under the period of Labour government between 1997 and 2010, and by about 5.1% in secondary schools.
• Spending squeeze over the 2010s. There was a squeeze on funding between 2010 and 2019. Secondary school spending per pupil fell by about 0.9% per year between 2010 and 2019, whilst primary school spending per pupil rose by 0.6% per year. This averages out to a small real-terms cut in spending per pupil over the decade. It is smaller than that implied in Figure 1 as individual schools were taking on funding and responsibilities previously assigned to local authorities over this period. Secondary schools saw a worse picture mainly due to big reductions in school sixth-form funding.
• Recovery in spending since 2019. Since 2019, we have seen a recovery in spending per pupil, with 1% per year real-terms growth in primary and secondary school spending per pupil between 2019 and 2024. This reflects increases to the schools budget delivered in the 2019 and 2021 spending reviews, and extra grants to cover higher-than-expected staff pay awards. It will also include the effects of additional pensions grants.
• Modest growth expected in 2025. For next year, we expect modest real-terms growth of 0.5% in spending per pupil. Whilst the overall schools budget is growing by £2.3 billion in cash terms, about £1 billion of this is focused on high needs provision, which means we only expect very modest growth in primary and secondary school spending per pupil. 

Two long-terms trend emerge from this analysis. First, there have clearly been cycles in the growth of spending per pupil. Over the long run, primary school spending per pupil has grown by about 2.4% per year in real terms, and by 1.7% in secondary schools. This averages out across phases to about 2% per year across all schools. However, growth has clearly not been even over time. Modest growth or cuts during the 1980s and 1990s were followed by large increases during the 2000s, which were in turn followed by cuts and freezes during the 2010s. Whilst we have seen some recovery in spending per pupil since 2019, the modest rates of growth we see (about 1% per year or less in real terms) are still below the long-run average growth rate. 

Second, the gap between secondary and primary school spending has fallen significantly over time. In the 1980s, secondary school spending per pupil was about 56% higher than primary school spending per pupil. This narrowed to 49% in the 1990s and then to 30% in the 2000s. This narrowing continued through the 2010s, and the secondary–primary school funding difference is due to be only 11% in 2025–26. Some of the recent narrowing reflects that primary schools have benefited more from the transfer of responsibilities and funding from local authorities to schools. However, this is also clearly part of a long-term relative shift in funding and resources from secondary to primary schools.