Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the per pupil funding to schools (a) in Essex and (b) nationally was in (i) 2016/17 and (ii) 2023/24; and what the percentage increase adjusted for inflation for schools (A) in Essex and (B) nationally was between those years.

The department publishes statistics on schools funding at the national level, including revenue funding to state-funded schools in England for pupils aged 5 to 16, in cash and real terms. Statistics for the 2010/11 to 2023/24 financial years are available at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-funding-statistics.

In 2016/17 national per pupil funding in cash terms was £5,590 and in 2023/24 this had risen to £7,460 in cash terms. This represents a cumulative growth in per pupil funding since 2016/17 of 9.9% in real terms, as measured by the GDP deflator.

The published information has been designed to capture core funding for schools and be as consistent and comparable as possible across these years, given that the funding system has changed significantly during that time. It covers mainstream primary and secondary schools, special schools, alternative provision, pupil referral units and non-maintained special schools. Information about the methodology can be found at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/methodology/school-funding-statistics-methodology. The department does not have a breakdown of this time series at local authority level, therefore equivalent figures are not available for Essex.

At local authority level, the department instead publish per pupil units of funding for the schools block of the dedicated schools grant (DSG) in cash terms. In 2016/17 for Essex, this was £4,392. Following changes to the funding system in 2017/18, the primary and secondary per pupil units of funding were provided separately and, in 2023/24 for Essex, these were £4,720 and £6,116 respectively. These figures are for mainstream schools only and do not include any additional grant funding outside of the DSG, such as the mainstream schools additional grant and teachers’ pay additional grant. The national equivalent to these local authority figures is £4,636 for 2016/17 and £4,954 and £6,422 for 2023/24 for primary and secondary schools respectively.