Cost per pupil

[Jux]

Can anyone tell me the cost of secondary education per pupil? I and DH have been googling for hours and are going round in circles. We need a table county by county ideally.

Help!

What education or private?

There are no state figures at county level- it varies from school to school. School funding is exceptionally complicated. The dsg is the starting point for funding but then other grants kick in depending on the context of the school and the background of the pupils. This varies from la to la.

Ah, thanks. It's for state schools, so I can see from what you've said that it's not at all simple to find what we need. I thought it would be easier than that because I found a site campaigning for fairer funding for Devon schools which had a per capita funding figure for both Devon and London. I wanted to know a few others too, but couldn't find them.

The la gets an amount of money in. They then top slice it for various central functions and an amount per pupil then goes to schools ( depending on age). However this is then topped up by other funding which varies from la to la. How much goes to each school per pupil
is locally determined through a schools forum. For example one la may give more money per head for small school, others for sen, eal, etc etc

The amount varies not just by la to la but school to school. 2 identical sized schools may receive different amounts from the same la.

Each local authority has to compile "education spending" statements.

One document is called the "budget statement" and the other is called the "out turn statement" There must be a clause in the "Education Act" which requires local authorities to compile these figures and send them to the Department for Education in Whitehall.

Your library may have copies for your local area.

or phone up your local authority Education offices and ask to speak to someone in "schools Finance" section.

Jux,
This is very complicated and the nice figures that are produced by the Department for Education are average figures which are meaningless in many respects.

The funding that each LA gets per pupil from the Department can be seen here, but this is only the direct school grant and does not include alsorts of other grants.

media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/xls/d/dsg%20regional%20summaries.xls

This funding to the LA is then distributed to specific schools using the LA's own funding formula, some of which are fiendishly complicated as has been suggested by others.
Each LA has to complete what is called the Section 52 report which indicates what each school is getting and a partial breakdown of how the funding is generated. Every LA must put this information on their website but in many it is buried away so that it is difficult to find it. This is Devons

www.devon.gov.uk/s5210-11.xls

Table 2 has the info for each school on it, table 3 has school numbers on it and table 4 is a breakdown of how the funding is made up (best of luck with this one!)

You can ask at your Library to see a copy of the Section 52 statements.

Or, ask the library to get you a personal copy from the education department.

Thanks all!

admission, the first link is no longer available and the second downloads a report but without the tables, which won't download! I had no idea I was getting into such a rat's nest with this. I have found some average figures which will do for our very imprecise purposes.

This has given us something to work on, and at any rate gets us started. I think I'll let dh take it from here, it's he who wants them. I've told him everything you've said. TBH, I'm not entirely sure what he wants the figures for - I think he's after proving a point to the council. Good luck to him!

Thanks again.

I've just found the results of some research that suggests £9000 per pupil.

I think schools in Leicestershire (not the city), are the worst funded in the country. At least they were 4 or 5 years ago. Apparently school funding is very complicated, and for 'historic' reasons shire counties in England get less per pupil than other areas.

Local MPs 'asked questions' as to why! But to change things other areas would have to get less funding......and that ain't gonna happen.

Willowfae,
That figure is an unrealistic figure against the actual funding per pupil received by the school.
No Local Authority receives that figure, the highest funding is to the City of London LA and to Tower Hamlets LA and is about 2/3rds of the figure you quote.
I would guess that the figure of £9000 is derived from all funding that goes into the education sector, a substantial part of which does not get to the schools in any form of funding or services.

It's a shame that more of that £9000 doesn't make it in to the actual schools. My children's very good independent schools cost barely more than that.

It is about 4k for a primary school child in my rural la. Depends on their age ( infant class size etc).

Las with more deprived children getva lot more.

Table 4 of the second link that admission gave you, says that years 7-9 get a 1.32 weighting ratio, which means their basic per head figure is £2853.23; year 10 get a 1.53 ratio so £3307.55; year 11 get 1.63 ratio, so £3518.88.

But, as many posters have said, you then get EAL funding, SEN funding, Deprivation funding, small school uplift, differing funding if a school does/does not have a swimming pool, and so on.

So it is almost impossible to come up with a real figure for comparison.

JUX,

According to one of the country?s top private schools, the figure given for educating a pupil in the state sector was £5850 in 2008/9.

See the opening paragraph here.