Schools

Funded by the Nuffield Foundation

In 2025–26, the government is set to provide about £65 billion for school funding in England. This covers day-to-day spending on pupils aged 5–16 in state-funded schools. As such, it represents the single largest element of day-to-day education spending in England. The vast majority of this is provided to schools via the National Funding Formula, which was introduced in 2018. This comprises three blocks: the schools block; the high needs block; and the central school services block. In addition, schools receive extra funding via the pupil premium, with fixed amounts per pupil from disadvantaged backgrounds.

All analysis here relates to public spending on schools in England. For further details on the methods used to analyse school spending, please see https://ifs.org.uk/education-spending/methods-and-data.  

1. Total public spending on schools

Figure 1 shows the total levels of school funding and spending under various definitions. As shown by the green line, the total core schools budget (covering day-to-day spending on state schools for pupils aged 5–16) has risen between 2019–20 and 2025–26 by about 16% in real terms or by £9 billion in 2025–26 prices. It has also risen by about 25% or £13 billion in real terms since 2010–11. As we shall see, most of the rise in funding over time can be accounted for by a combination of rising pupil numbers over the 2010s and, more recently, rapid increases in spending on special educational needs and disabilities, as well as compensation to cover the costs of increased employer pension and National Insurance contributions. 

In previous annual reports on education spending in England, our main measure of school spending has related to total spending on schools for pupils aged 3–18. This includes funding for both school sixth forms (a crucial part of many secondary schools’ budgets), additional local authority spending outside the formal schools budget (such as SEND transport and assessments) and early years funding (as primary school budgets often included early years funding in historical data).  

However, rising levels of early years funding have made it increasingly difficult to interpret trends in this measure of school spending, and made it hard to compare against other official measures of public spending, such as spending totals produced at the time of fiscal events and official statistics on school funding produced by the Department for Education.1 We have therefore adjusted our methods to remove early years funding over time and focus on pupils aged 5 and over.  

This has the benefit of allowing us to directly compare our measures with government statistics and proposals, and to show how adding different components of spending can affect aggregate trends over time. The main disadvantage is that we are likely to be overstating the level of spending up to 2009–10 because it is not possible to separate out spending on nursery classes in primary schools before then. We therefore focus on 2010–11 as a crucial year of comparison. This does not affect perceptions of trends over time in spending per pupil as our previous analysis showed almost no real-terms difference between spending per pupil in 2009–10 and 2010–11.  

The yellow line in Figure 1 shows our estimated level of school spending for pupils aged 5–16. This is directly comparable to the core schools budget so that we can then add other elements of funding outside the core schools budget. Reassuringly, the two series show very similar levels and trends over time. There are two main sources of difference. First, there is a slight discrepancy between 2011–12 and 2014–15, when we are likely to be missing the complex set of grants provided to academies to cover some aspects of local authority spending they did not benefit from. Second, planned spending on schools has exceeded the core schools budget by about £500 million in 2024–25 and by about £900 million in 2025–26. This almost certainly relates to overspending on high needs by local authorities, which we describe in more detail below.  

Figure 1 then shows (in the blue series) the level of school spending if we add school sixth form funding and wider local authority spending on school services. We generally refer to this as our measure of total school spending, and we estimate that it is likely to total about £73 billion in 2025–26. This measure of school spending was largely constant in real terms between 2010–11 and 2019–20, with small growth in school spending for pupils aged 5–16 offset by large falls in school sixth form funding and wider local authority spending. Since 2019–20, total school spending has risen by 19% in real terms or £12 billion in 2025–26 prices. This is slightly faster than the 17% growth we saw in school spending for pupils aged 5–16. This mainly reflects growth in wider local authority spending, particularly on transport to and from school for children with special educational needs and disabilities.  

Figure 2 breaks total public spending on schools down into its various components. As shown in Figure 1, total spending on schools for ages 5–16 grew by £10 billion or 17% in real terms between 2019–20 and 2025–26. However, about £2.3 billion of this growth can be accounted for by additional grants to compensate schools for higher employer pension and National Insurance contributions. From the perspective of a school, this is extra money to directly pay for extra outgoings, with no change in real resources. If we exclude these grants, total spending grew by about 13% or £7.5 billion between 2019–20 and 2025–26.

Total spending on schools for pupils aged 5–16 (excluding pension and National Insurance grants) can then be broken down into four main components, which are very different in terms of their levels and growth over time:

• Mainstream school budgets. The single largest element of school spending is funding for mainstream state schools, which totalled about £47 billion in 2025–26. This is funding provided direct to primary and secondary schools to spend on core provision. It is allocated using the ‘schools block’ of the National Funding Formula. Central government sets the national formula, with important factors including pupil numbers, levels of deprivation and London weighting. This fully determines the amount local authorities receive. However, local authorities can tweak the formula for schools in their area, which determines the amount maintained schools and academies receive via the ‘schools block’. Spending on mainstream school budgets has risen by 8% in real terms since 2019–20, significantly below the overall growth in spending.  
• High needs spending. This is the main element of spending on special educational needs and disabilities. It covers funding for special schools and alternative provision, as well as top-ups provided to mainstream schools where the costs of required provision exceed what schools are expected to deliver from their core budgets. Spending on high needs has risen substantially over time: planned spending on high needs (excluding the early years) has risen by 54% in real terms since 2019–20. This is highly likely to be an underestimate of actual spending by local authorities.  
• Central spending. This mostly relates to core and statutory duties that local authorities are required to deliver, such as school admissions and place planning. It can also cover central administration spending, such as HR and finance services for schools. This is a small element of overall spending, and fell from about £1 billion in 2019–20 to about £0.7 billion in 2025–26. Funding is provided as part of the ‘central school services block’.  
• Pupil premium. The fourth component is the ‘pupil premium’, which is a direct payment to schools based on the number of disadvantaged pupils. The main elements are the deprivation factors, with £1,515 per year for primary school pupils who have been eligible for free school meals in the last six years and £1,075 per year for such pupils in secondary schools. These pupil premium rates were frozen in cash terms between 2015–16 and 2021–22. Rates then increased in cash terms from 2022–23 onwards, but did not always keep pace with overall inflation. As a result, pupil premium rates in 2025–26 are over 16% lower in real terms in 2025–26 than they were a decade earlier in 2015–16. Offsetting this, total pupil premium funding has been pushed up by growth in the numbers of pupils eligible for free school meals in recent years as part of transitional protections as universal credit has been rolled out. As a result, total pupil premium funding in 2025–26 is about 8% lower in real terms than in 2015–16 (as compared with 16% lower rates) and about the same level in real terms as in 2019–20. The government has recently indicated that it is intending to consult about changing the measure of deprivation used in the pupil premium and other school deprivation funding, such as by using more detailed family income measures linked to individual pupils. This would be a welcome change as eligibility for free school meals is a relatively blunt measure of deprivation.  

As is clear, growth in high needs spending has far outpaced growth in all the other elements of spending on pupils aged 5–16. Indeed, growth in high needs spending can explain over half of the increase in overall funding since 2019–20, despite only representing about a sixth of overall spending. This has led to a significant squeeze on mainstream school budgets, which we will return to, in terms of both past and likely future trends.  

In addition to high needs spending shown in green in Figure 2, local authorities also spend nearly £4 billion per year on other services that mostly or largely benefit schools and pupils, such as SEND assessments and transport (this is shown by the yellow bars). This spending fell significantly in real terms over the 2010s, with a 12% real-terms drop between 2015–16 and 2019–20. Since then, spending has grown by £1.5 billion or 70% in real terms. This is mostly explained by SEND transport and assessment spending, which has grown by £1.1 billion or more than doubled in real terms since 2019–20.  

Secondary schools also receive around £3 billion annually in funding for school sixth forms (the red bars in Figure 2). This fell by about 16% in real terms between 2015–16 and 2019–20, reflecting the sustained declines in sixth form funding per pupil and reduced numbers of sixth form pupils. Since 2019–20, this funding has gone up by about 24% in real terms, exceeding the overall growth in school spending for pupils aged 5–16. This reflects rising numbers of sixth form pupils and increases to funding rates (see ‘Further education and sixth forms’ for further details).

2. State school spending per pupil

In this section, we examine trends in state school spending per pupil. We start by examining total spending per pupil, using the measures of spending discussed in the previous section. We then consider levels of spending per pupil in state primary and secondary schools, covering only the actual levels of spending by primary and secondary schools (rather than by local authorities).

Total school spending per pupil

In Figure 3, we present a range of measures of total school spending per pupil, reflecting the different spending definitions we used above. We also show how spending per pupil has changed since 2010–11.  

First, we examine trends in the core schools budget per pupil aged 5–16. This is the main measure of spending used by the Department for Education in its school funding statistics, and includes grants to compensate schools for increased employer pension and National Insurance contributions. This measure of spending per pupil fell by 3% in real terms between 2010–11 and 2019–20, before rising by 12% since 2019–20, and it is now about 9% higher than in 2010–11. 

As shown in Figure 3, our separate measure of planned school spending for pupils aged 5–16 shows identical trends to the core schools budget. To further understanding, the series in yellow shows planned school spending for pupils aged 5–16, excluding grants for increases to employer pension and National Insurance contributions. If we exclude these grants, spending per pupil fell by 5% between 2010–11 and 2019–20 and has since risen by 10% in real terms. This leaves spending per pupil about 5% higher than in 2010–11. 

In the blue line, we add school sixth form funding and wider local authority spending on school services. Under this measure, total school spending per pupil aged 5–18 fell by 10% in real terms between 2010–11 and 2019–20. This is higher than the much-cited 9% fall that we have found in past analysis. This change reflects two main factors: the exclusion of early years funding (which rose over this period) and historical revisions to economy-wide inflation. Since 2019–20, this measure of spending per pupil has risen by 11% in real terms, largely in line with spending on pupils aged 5–16. As a result, spending per pupil aged 5–18 is now about the same level as it was in 2010–11. 

Our final series (in burgundy) shows mainstream school spending per pupil back to 2015–16 (this excludes high needs spending from the spending total and excludes pupils in special schools and alternative provision from the pupil count). Mainstream school spending per pupil has risen by 5% in real terms since 2019–20, about half of the overall rise in school spending per pupil over this period. Furthermore, there has been almost no net real-terms change in mainstream school spending compared with 2015–16. This emphasises just how much trends in overall school spending can be explained by rapid rises in high needs spending, and the resultant squeeze on mainstream school budgets. 

In our view, the measure of total school spending per pupil aged 5–18 (the blue series on Figure 3) represents the most comprehensive and consistent measure of the real-terms changes in school spending per pupil. It includes all spending, including the important effects of falling school sixth form funding on secondary school budgets and change to local authority spending that directly affects pupils and schools. However, showing multiple measures allows us to provide a richer perspective by illustrating the real-terms changes in the specific budgets for pupils aged 5–16 and how rising high needs spending is squeezing mainstream school budgets. 

Looking to the future, we have already seen that the core schools budget is due to be frozen in real terms between 2025–26 and 2028–29. After accounting for the expected fall in pupil numbers, this equates to a 4% rise in real-terms spending per pupil. The likely future path of our other measures of school spending will be determined by school sixth form funding (see ‘Further education and sixth forms’) and actual levels of spending on high needs.

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 2023–24 (in 2025–26 prices), together with projections up to 2025–26. Actual figures up to 2023–24 are based on spending levels by individual schools. This includes spending on school sixth forms, but excludes central spending by local authorities and multi-academy trusts.2

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

• Modest growth over the 1980s and 1990s. Over 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 1.0% per year in secondary schools. 
• Rapid growth over the 2000s. From 1999 onwards, spending per pupil grew rapidly. During the period of Labour government between 1997 and 2010, spending per pupil grew by about 5.9% per year in primary schools 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 over this period, whilst primary school spending per pupil rose by 0.5% per year. This averages out to a small real-terms cut in spending per pupil over the decade. 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 expected between 2019–20 and 2025–26. However, this is still below the historical rates of growth. Over the long run, real-terms spending per pupil has grown by about 2.4% per year in primary schools and by 1.7% in secondary schools.

The gap between secondary and primary school spending has decreased 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 12% in 2025–26. This more recent narrowing will partly reflect the large reductions in school sixth form funding. This is a significant long-term relative shift in funding and resources from secondary to primary schools.