LA and school expenditure
Financial year 2020-21

Description

This document describes the data included in the School Finance in England National Statistics release’s underlying data files. This data is released under the terms of the  Open Government License (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/) and is intended to meet at least 3 stars for  Open Data (https://www.gov.uk/government/policies/improving-the-transparency-and-accountability-of-government-and-its-services/supporting-pages/releasing-data-in-open-formats).

The  methodology document (https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/methodology/school-workforce-in-england-methodolgy) should be referenced alongside this data. It provides information on the data sources, their coverage and quality as well as explaining methodology used in producing the data.

Coverage

The Statistical Publication: ‘School Finance in England’ provides the latest information at national, regional and local level on the expenditure on schools, education and children's and young people's services by local authorities. Alongside the local authority spending, the release also provides a detailed breakdown of income and expenditure by schools, with aggregations to the local authority, regional and national level. The publication summarises the information that was collected via the summer 2021 Consistent Financial Reporting (CFR) and S251 Outturn collections . It supersedes the January 2021 data release.

The CFR data will also be available at an individual school level via the Schools Financial Benchmarking website.

This publication includes information on:

- Local authority spending on schools and other education- time-series giving the detailed breakdown of spending split by school-phase and overall spending area (e.g. individual schools budget, expenditure on free school meals, SEN support etc).
- Local authority spending on children's and young people's services- time-series giving the detailed breakdown of spending split by provision sector (e.g. own, private, voluntary) and spending area (e.g. sure start centres, family services, youth justice etc).
- Schools' income and expenditure- time-series giving the detailed breakdown of schools income and expenditure by school phase and financial area (e.g. staff, estates and buildings, etc)
- Schools' revenue balances- time-series giving the overall financial balance data for schools and overall numbers of schools in surplus and deficit.

File formats and conventions

The data files are provided in comma-separated values format, which is compatible with standard spreadsheet software such as Excel.

The following symbols are used in the underlying data files as follows:

: Not available - this information has not been collected or there are no estimates available at this level of aggregation.

N/A Not available - this is normally where a statistic cannot be produced. For example where a denominator is not available to produce a percentage.

z= not applicable. The 'z' symbol is only to be used when an observation is not applicable (e.g. in tables of employment where people under 16 cannot legally be employed).

Data files

LA maintained schools, all expenditure (National, Regional, LA levels) (£million)

Filename: la_maintained_schools_expenditure_final.csv
Geographic levels: Local authority; National; Regional
Time period: 2015-16 to 2020-21
Content summary: This file contains expenditure data for local authority maintained schools collected via the Consistent Financial reporting data collection.

Variable names and descriptions for this file are provided below:

Variable name            |  Variable description
-----------------------  |  ------------------------------------------
expenditure_£million     |  Expenditure (£ million)
expenditure_description  |  Category of expenditure
expenditure_per_pupil    |  Expenditure per pupil
school_phase             |  Phase of education - Filter by school type

Footnotes:

1. There are a small number of local authorities with no LA maintained secondary schools, all are academies.


LA maintained schools, all income (National, Regional, LA levels) (£million)

Filename: la_maintained_schools_income_final.csv
Geographic levels: Local authority; National; Regional
Time period: 2015-16 to 2020-21
Content summary: This file contains income data for local authority maintained schools collected via the Consistent Financial reporting data collection.

Variable names and descriptions for this file are provided below:

Variable name       |  Variable description
------------------  |  ------------------------------------------
income_£million     |  Income (£ million)
income_description  |  Category of income
income_per_pupil    |  Income per pupil
school_phase        |  Phase of education - Filter by school type

Footnotes:

1. There are a small number of local authorities with no LA maintained secondary schools, all are academies.


LA maintained schools, revenue reserves, (National, Regional, LA levels) (£million)

Filename: la_maintained_schools_revenue_reserve_final.csv
Geographic levels: Local authority; National; Regional
Time period: 2015-16 to 2020-21
Content summary: This file contains revenue reserves data for local authority maintained schools collected via the Consistent Financial reporting data collection.

Variable names and descriptions for this file are provided below:

Variable name                                  |  Variable description
---------------------------------------------  |  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
average_revenue_balance                        |  Average revenue balance per school
B01_million                                    |  Committed revenue balances (B01) (£ million)
B02_million                                    |  Uncommitted revenue balances (B02) (£ million)
B03_million                                    |  Devolved formula capital balance (B03) (£ million)
B05_million                                    |  Other capital balances (B05) (£ million)
B06_million                                    |  Community-focused school revenue balances (B06) (£ million)
number_schools                                 |  Number of schools making a Consistent Financial Reporting (CFR) return
number_schools_with_deficit                    |  Number of schools with a negative revenue balance
number_schools_with_surplus                    |  Number of schools with a surplus revenue balance
OB01_million                                   |  Opening pupil-focused revenue balance (OB01) (£ million)
OB02_million                                   |  Opening community-focused revenue balance (OB02) (£ million)
OB03_million                                   |  Opening capital balance (OB03)(£ million)
PC_schools_with_deficit                        |  Percentage of schools with a negative revenue balance (deficit)
PC_schools_with_surplus                        |  Percentage of schools with a surplus revenue balance
revenue_balance_as_pc_total_income             |  Revenue balance as a percentage of total income
school_over_threshold_av_per_school            |  Average surplus per school for schools over the threshold
school_over_threshold_pc_surplus               |  Percentage of schools with a surplus over the threshold
school_phase                                   |  Phase of education - Filter by school type
school_surplus_over_threshold_million          |  Total surplus of schools over the threshold (£ million)
schools_surplus_over_threshold                 |  Number of schools with a surplus over the threshold
total_income_million                           |  Total income (£ million)
total_revenue_balance_million                  |  Total revenue balance (£ million)
total_revenue_reserve_schools_deficit_million  |  Total revenue balance of schools with a deficit (£ million)
total_revenue_reserve_schools_surplus_million  |  Total revenue balance of schools with a surplus (£ million)

Footnotes:

1. Includes schools making a part year return as they converted to academies part way through the financial year
2. There are a small number of local authorities with no LA maintained secondary schools, all are academies.


S251 Outturn - Children and Young People's Services (National, Regional, LA levels)

Filename: s251outturn_cypservices.csv
Geographic levels: Local authority; National; Regional
Time period: 2015-16 to 2020-21
Content summary: This file contains details of expenditure on children's services, and young peoples services by local authorities collected via the Section 251 Outturn return.

Variable names and descriptions for this file are provided below:

Variable name                  |  Variable description
-----------------------------  |  --------------------------------------------------------
description_of_expenditure     |  Category of expenditure - Filter by expenditure category
grants_inside_AEF              |  Grants inside of aggregate external finance (£ million)
grants_outside_AEF             |  Grants outside of aggregate external finance (£ million)
income                         |  Income (£ million)
net_current_expenditure        |  Total net current expenditure (£ million)
net_revenue_expenditure        |  Net revenue expenditure (£ million)
other_public_sector_provision  |  Spend on other public sector provision (£ million)
own_provision                  |  Spend on LAs own provision (£ million)
per_capita_net_current_spend   |  Per capita net current expenditure (£)
private_provision              |  Spend on private provision (£ million)
total_expenditure              |  Total gross expenditure (£ million)
voluntary_provision            |  Spend on voluntary provision (£ million)


S251 Outturn - Schools and other education (National, Regional, LA levels)

Filename: s251outturn_schools_education.csv
Geographic levels: Local authority; National; Regional
Time period: 2015-16 to 2020-21
Content summary: This file contains details of school expenditure and other education and community expenditure by local authorities collected via the Section 251 Outturn return.

Variable names and descriptions for this file are provided below:

Variable name                           |  Variable description
--------------------------------------  |  --------------------------------------------------------
category_of_expenditure                 |  Category of expenditure - Filter by expenditure category
early_years_establishments              |  Spend on early years establishments (£ million)
gross_expenditure                       |  Total gross expenditure (£ million)
income                                  |  Income (£ million)
net_expenditure                         |  Total net expenditure (£ million)
net_per_capita_expenditure              |  Per pupil net expenditure (£)
post_16                                 |  Spend on post 16 establishments (£ million)
primary_schools                         |  Spend on primary schools (£ million)
pupil_referral_units_and_alt_provision  |  Spend on pupil referall units and AP (£ million)
secondary_schools                       |  Spend on secondary schools (£ million)
sen_and_special_schools                 |  Spend on special schools (£ million)


Summary data for headline figures

Filename: overall_summary_data.csv
Geographic levels: National
Time period: 2015-16 to 2020-21
Content summary: This file contains a summary of the headline, national level figures for this publication.

Variable names and descriptions for this file are provided below:

Variable name           |  Variable description
----------------------  |  -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
expenditure_la_schools  |  Expenditure by local authority maintained schools (billion)
income_la_schools       |  Income of local authority maintained schools (billion)
Indicator               |  School or local authority
la_all                  |  Total expenditure by local authorities on schools, childrens and young peoples services and other education and community (billion)
la_cyps                 |  Total expenditure by local authorities on childrens and young peoples services (billion)
la_other                |  Total expenditure by local authorities on other education and community (billion)
la_schools              |  Total expenditure by local authorities on schools (billion)
pc_deficit              |  Percentage of local authority maintained schools in deficit
