Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what comparative assessment he has made of the ratio of funding rates for (a) all secondary education and (b) upper secondary education in (i) the UK, (ii) France (iii) Germany and (iv) the US.

The Department uses internationally comparable data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to assess how our funding compares internationally. This includes figures published by the OECD on expenditure on educational institutions per full-time equivalent student, for upper secondary programmes and all secondary programmes. The UK has higher total government expenditure on primary and secondary educational institutions per student than all G7 countries bar the US. The expenditure is above the OECD average.

The data on expenditure by phase of education, including a breakdown for upper secondary programmes and all secondary programmes, is available in Table C1.1 of the OECD’s Education at a Glance 2018 publication at the following link: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/education-at-a-glance-2018/total-expenditure-on-educational-institutions-per-full-time-equivalent-student-2015_eag-2018-table133-en.