IFS - School spending focused more on poorest schools over past 20 years; even more radical reforms over next decade

18 Apr 2016 12:01 PM

School spending in England has become increasingly targeted at schools with pupils from poorer backgrounds over the past 20 years.

As a result, spending per pupil in 2013–14 amongst the 20% of secondary schools with the poorest pupils was £1,800 more than spending per pupil in the richest 20% (£7,400 compared with £5,600). This gap of more than 30% now compares with a gap of just 15% in the late 1990s. This is one of the main findings from a new report written by IFS researchers and funded by the Nuffield Foundation on long-run changes to school spending in England since the late 1970s.

That said, there is also a lot of variation in funding between schools with similar pupil intakes. Among the 20% poorest schools, 10% spent more than £9,000 per pupil while 10% spent below £6,200. Some of these differences are readily explained by other features of the schools, but many are not. That is why the government is currently consulting on radical plans for the gradual introduction of a national school funding formula in England from 2017–18 onwards. This would replace the 152 different funding formulae used by local authorities with one single, simple formula applying across all state-funded schools in England. As a result, schools in similar circumstances would, for the first time, receive similar levels of funding. Although we cannot detail the precise effects of this reform as the government has not yet proposed an exact formula, our report published seeks to set these reforms in a proper historical context.

Key findings include:

It is the total amount of spending that pupils experience over all their years in schooling that is likely to matter most for educational outcomes. This report provides the first estimates of total school spending received by each cohort in England:  

“Over the past two decades, school spending has become increasingly targeted at the schools with the most deprived intakes; the Pupil Premium continued rather than started this trend. This represents a major shift in the role of the state, with the school funding system playing an increasingly important role in redistribution,” said Chris Belfield, one of the authors of the report.

“The introduction of a national funding formula for schools in England looks set to be one of the most radical shake-ups of school funding in at least the past 30 years. Replacing 152 different formulae with one single, simple formula will inevitably lead to substantial changes in funding across schools and, for good or bad, will almost completely remove local authorities from the school funding system,” said Luke Sibieta, the other author of the report.

Notes to Editors:

  1. ‘Long Run Trends in School Spending in England’ by Christopher Belfield (IFS) and Luke Sibieta (IFS) is available at: http://www.ifs.org.uk/uploads/publications/comms/R115.pdf
  1. This research has been funded by the Nuffield Foundation. The Nuffield Foundation is an endowed charitable trust that aims to improve social well-being in the widest sense. It funds research and innovation in education and social policy and also works to build capacity in education, science and social science research. The Nuffield Foundation has funded this project, but the views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Foundation. More information is available at nuffieldfoundation.org
  1. The Department for Education is currently consulting on plans for a national funding formula for all state-funded schools in England that would be gradually introduced from 2017-18 onwards (https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/schools-national-funding-formula). The first stage of this consultation (which closes on April 17th) sets out the overall principles for a national funding formula. A second stage will then set out the precise details.