Real-terms education investment ‘down’
SCHOOLS ARE facing the first real-terms cuts to their funding since the mid-1990s, a leading think tank has claimed.
Spending per pupil is set to fall by 6.5 per cent by 2019/20, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), although it added that school funding has been well protected over the last two decades.
Instead, it is sixth-formers who are facing a continuing squeeze on financial budgets, with spending per further education (FE) student falling by 6.7 per cent from 2010/11 to 2015/16 and a further drop of 6.5 per cent expected over the next few years.
It means that funding for 16 to 18-year-olds is no higher than it was almost 30 years ago. The IFS study examines education spending for different age groups – from early years to universities – over a number of years.
It shows that the biggest spending increases over the last 20 years have been on schoolchildren in England, with £4,900 currently spent on each primary school pupil and £6,300 spent per secondary student. In both cases this is around double, in real terms, the amount spent in the mid-1990s.
But the report shows that school spending is now falling, and will drop by 6.5 per cent over the course of this Parliament.
“This will be the first time schools have seen real-terms cuts in spending per pupil since the mid-1990s”, it says.
The IFS also says that protections for school budgets over the last parliament mean that spending per pupil will still be similar to 2010 levels, and it notes that the introduction of the national funding formula, which will
redistribute money to schools in a way that ministers say will be fairer, is the “largest shake-up in school funding in England for 25 years”.
The IFS report warns that 16-18 education has been “the biggest loser from education spending changes during the course of the last 25 years”.
“It experienced larger cuts in the 1990s than other sectors,” it says. “This long-term squeeze in resources is a major challenge for the sector as a whole.”
FE spending per student was 45 per cent higher than secondary school spending in 1990, and is on target to be around 10 per cent lower in 2019/20.
Luke Sibieta, one of the report authors and an IFS associate director, said: “Over the next few years, both further education and schools are due to experience cuts.
“For FE, this comes on the back of tight funding settlements for decades that will leave spending per student the same in 2020 as it was in 1990.
A Department for Education spokesman said: “School funding is now at its highest level on record at more than £40bn in 2016-17 and the IFS has shown that by 2020 per pupil spending in schools is set to be at least 70 per cent higher in real terms than in 1990.
“We are transforming post-16 education and investing £7bn to ensure there is a place in education or training for every 16 to 19-year-old who wants one.”