School budget

[Fangsalot89]

Does anyone know if you can request to see a breakdown of the school budget by department? It’s a particular dept I’m actually interested in.
The school website doesn’t show this and I wasn’t sure if it’s something that’s well out of bounds for a parent to ask to see.
It’s a CofE state school rather than private.
Thanks

You can request but not likely to be given the chance of seeing it. The amount of funding going to a specific department is going to be fairly low even in a secondary school, given that 85% of the funding will be staffing.
Is there a specific reason why you are asking?

What on earth do you think that's going to tell you?
How would you know what resources/staffing has to be bought from that budget?
Staff within school don't even know the the budget of other departments, let alone the public. Primaries probably don't even have separate subject budgets, when I was a primary governor it was capital, staffing, resources etc, not even split by year group/infant and junior, etc.

What do you want to know? They probably have a strategy on how they're spending their budget but not sure it's something anyone except the budget setters have control over

There is no legal requirement to allow parents (I'm guessing you're a parent) a detailed breakdown of a school budget. There will be a Pupil Premium statement on the website though if that's what you're interested in. Otherwise get yourself elected as a governor. We see it all (and very dull it is too).

What do you want to know and what do you plan to do with the information?

What are you hoping to achieve? Schools have tight - very tight - budgets. Most of it goes on staffing. Unless the dept you are talking about is SEN and you are wondering how your child's ECHP funding is spent I am not sure what you would hope to get, and to be honest even if the school did answer your request, I think you would be shocked with with the numbers. Schools aren't so much deciding where to spend their money as deciding how they can spread too little money amongst too many important needs. As PP said, the PP spending will be on their website.

You could ask the school governors or head teacher. Personally when I was in SLT I would have been fine to show you (staff salaries aren’t identifiable in the accounts usually). There is incredibly little money to go around and parents understanding this better (and ideally voting to improve it!!) is no bad thing in my book.

The majority of the school budget pays for staff salary, almost nothing left for anything else. What on earth do you want to know? Unless you are a governor you will get nothing I would imagine!

Budgets don't have massive detail and categories are quite broad. For example, 'staffing' will break down by type of employee, but 'support staff' includes general TAs and 1:1 support TAs, etc.

On there website there should be a link to the governments school financial bench marking website where you can see some budget information. There should also be pupil premium, sen information and sports premium information.

For most schools staffing would be around 85% of the budget but some if will be higher or lower.
As others have said our budgets are capital staffing and resources rather than 'art/english/history' so it might be hard to tell.

I’ve never seen a primary school budget broken down by department before. The school website should report though how their pupil premium, sports premium and Covid catch up money is being spent if that’s useful for you.

I do wish more people took an interest though. They might start understanding how tight things are.

@admission Thank you. I’m interested to know the budget allocation for a particular subject in a primary school vs an expense which I find totally pointless.

@Haskell “what on Earth” 🤣

@custardbear @Myothercarisalsoshit thank you.

@GolfForBrains What am I hoping to achieve? Well, I’d like to know the budget allocation for this year regarding a certain subject and offsetting that against an expense the head has paid for which is quite unnecessary given the state of the schools resources to begin with.
I won’t know what to do with the information until I get it. It could be fine for all I know

@Radio4ordie Thank you. I’m not interested in salaries and school running costs. It’s a particular breakdown I was wondering if it was possible to get access to that’s all but I agree, the more people can see the actual budgets the better for clarification on the terrible state they have to work under!

I doubt you will get anything that specific.

Would it be possible the school got a donation/grant for what they have purchased?

@MrsBungle thank you
@MildredPuppy couldn’t agree more

@ineedaholidaynow sadly that doesn’t sound like what’s happened. It’s plausible I guess but the information I’ve been given is leaning towards more of the budget being used for this thing. Our school is quite hot on naming donations but then I guess they could have asked to be nameless ☺️

So you are concerned that an extravagant expense has been through that the school cannot afford???

Follow the complaints procedure.

If you are a parent then you are massively overstepping the mark here. It is absolutely none of your business.

We never broke our expenditure down by subject in primary.
Why would you? So many resources are X curricular eg. white boards, pencils, paper, glue sticks.
There would be larger expenditures on eg reading books (clearly English) or wooden wheels (D&T) or footballs (PE) but not annually - schools prioritise these kinds of expenditure according to priorities on their action plan each year.
If you think some aspect of your child's education has been under-resourced, or something really unnecessary and expensive has been bought, you could raise that directly with the governors, I suppose.

When I was a primary governor the budget wasn't done by Department, as everyone else has said it was almost all salaries then things like utilities, resources, general upkeep, that sort of thing and was never in enough detail to see anyone specific thing. It didn't work like that

Is it a large school? What kind of thing do you mean by a department

@CommanderBurnham Kudos to the name btw but yes I’m concerned that the budget has been blown on something pointless.

@PyjamaFan Id say as a parent of a child who goes to the school, it’s not “massively overstepping the mark” at all. I mean, that alone is a huge exaggeration. The issue I have is for the past 12 months we’ve been heavily pressurised as a tiny school to fund this departments needs/resources for basic stuff and the target hasn’t been anywhere near reached but then this expense has been made which is not a basic. I’d say that was mismanagement of funds however, before I go two footed into it, I wanted to ask people who might know, if it’s information I am entitled to have access to. If it’s not, then I can’t do fuck all about it and will leave it be but if I can have a say, it’s worth bringing up.