Secondary School Budgets - confused!

[friendlymum67]

Can anyone explain to me how secondary school budgets work? My son attends a mediocre school which went into special measures in 2008 (obviously not in special measures now). It is quite old and and in need of sprucing up quite a bit i.e common areas, toilets, classrooms, generally etc. My daughter attends another local secondary for extra-curricular activities and everytime I take her I am envious of how the school looks!

Its common areas are in much better repair, they are just re-doing the communal courtyards, new pagoda's, new paving etc. The whole school looks better (and its results are better too, but that's another story!) How do they have the money for this general upkeep, when my son's school won't even sign up to text messaging parents because they don't have the money?!!

Its a nightmare and impossible to say why without being on the Finance Committee of both! Our main part of the school is relatively run down, due mainly to its age but we have some fabulous new buildings. All have been funded as extras through various pots available over the years.

The main part of the whole budget is the staff and if you manage to shave a few percent off of that it can provide a lot more money toward resources but you need the best staff first, so sometimes that squeezes a budget.

Most budget lines will differ for one reason or another.

Basically, it depends on so much, each comparison will have a different answer.

The more run down the building, the more it costs just to stop it falling down. A newer building has lower running and repair costs generally. Some schools expected to be rebuilt under the last government's scheme, so stopped throwing money at trying to stop their buildings from falling to bits, on the basis they would soon get lovely new buildings, anyway... meaning the expense of keeping those schools running, now, is even greater than ever. And, of course, the more children you have in your school, the more money you get given, but people don't want to send their children to the grotty looking school with less good results, so they suffer falling pupil numbers and therefore get less and less money to spend on anything. Finally, some schools are better run than others, different schools have different intakes of children and therefore different needs to deal with, and different schools make different choices on what to spend their money on regardless of their intake.

School funding is very complicated. In simple terms it is based on the number of children on the roll on a particular date in January, but there are all sorts of adjustments. If you look at the performance tables on the DfE website it will tell you the income per pupil and expenditure per pupil for each school and how it compares to the average for the LA and nationally.

As rabbitstew says, there can be all sorts of reasons for the difference. And I understand research suggests that the state of the school buildings is completely unrelated to the results achieved by the school.

Thanks ladies - you responses make sense and confirm what I was thinking!!

Rabbitstew your comment - but people don't want to send their children to the grotty looking school with less good results, so they suffer falling pupil numbers and therefore get less and less money to spend on anything. This is so true but a vicious circle!

I will continue to support my son's school as best I can and having been to a very positive meeting tonight at the school, will look onwards and upwards!