If the government wants to compensate schools for expected rises in costs in 2024/25 then school funding in England needs to rise by a further £700m over and above existing plans.
However, any hopes of further investment in the schools budget were dashed when education did not feature in the chancellor’s Spring Budget on March 6.
New analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (Sibieta, 2024) projects that school costs will rise by about 5% in 2024/25, while funding per-pupil is currently due to rise by just under 4%.
The analysis sets out how total school spending per-pupil fell by 9% in real terms between 2009/10 and 2019/20 – the “largest and most sustained cut in school spending per-pupil in England in at least 40 years”.
Since 2019/20, there have been significant rises which the analysis says is likely to lead to a 9.5% real-terms increase between 2019/20 and 2024/25.
