Over the last 30 years, there have been significant changes to the level and structure of education spending in England. How have these changes affected spending per pupil across the different phases of education over time and how will they evolve in the next few years? Such questions have become much more prominent in the public debate over the last few years. Given the work by James Heckman and others emphasising the differential effectiveness of resources at different stages of the life course, they are also of vital importance for understanding the effectiveness of the way education spending is targeted.

To inform such debates, IFS researchers released their first annual report on education spending in England, supported by the Nuffield Foundation. This provides consistent measures of day-to-day spending per pupil in England across the four main stages of education (early years, schools, further education and sixth forms, and higher education) stretching back to the early 1990s.