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Updated 29 September 2022
© Crown copyright 2022
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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/section-251-2022-to-2023/local-authority-planned-expenditure-benchmarking-tables-2022-to-2023-explanatory-note
The local authority planned expenditure benchmarking tables contain information submitted in the section 251 (s251) budget data collection for the 2022 to 2023 financial year. The tables show the information submitted in a format that allows users to compare planned expenditure between local authorities.
The benchmarking tables show the minimum, maximum, median and mean for each column.
The Department for Education publishes a statistical first release (SFR) approximately one week before the final tables. The SFR provides information and commentary about planned expenditure on education and young people’s services in the 2022 to 2023 financial year. It is designed to be a summary of the national picture of planned expenditure, whereas the benchmarking tables give detailed local authority level information, which allows comparison across areas.
Where information relates to items for which the local authority only has responsibility towards schools it maintains, the return gives full year budgets for schools that were maintained as at 31 March 2022. This includes any schools that were known to be converting to academy status during the year.
The final tables use s251 budget statement data loaded on the COLLECT system as of the closing date, regardless of the return status. The tables do not include the Isles of Scilly and City of London due to their small size.
The layout of the benchmarking tables has been changed to account for the move of line 1.1.10 School Improvement to line 1.6.7.
Following local authority boundary changes made in April 2021, the Additional Information table does not contain complete data for North Northamptonshire or West Northamptonshire this year. This is due to external supplementary tables only having data available until the end of March 2021.
As the data for West Northamptonshire was suppressed in the 2021 to 2022 release, this local authority has no entries available in the Year-on-Year table.
The statistical neighbours tool has been updated to account for boundary changes and to update the ‘mean weekly wage’ and ‘percentage of children eligible for FSM’ data. Please see the LAIIT user guide for further details.
There are two per capita tables:
The per capita gross table uses the gross amount submitted on the s251 budget statement. The per capita net table uses the amount net of any income tied to that line. The tables contain the amounts submitted in each line of the s251 statement divided by a count of children and young people (a “denominator”). In each case, the most appropriate available count is used according to whom that particular type of spending applies to.
For each line we choose the most relevant measure from:
Denominators are chosen for each line based on a range of criteria, such as the age group the spending applies to, and whether spending applies to maintained school pupils, academy pupils or children and young people who don’t attend state schools.
Table 1: lines of the budget statement by denominator
As more academies open it is becoming increasingly important to distinguish which categories include spending on maintained schools only and which include spending on all state funded schools. For example, “supply of school places” is a statutory function of the local authority towards all schools, so denominator B is used. ‘Schools budget insurance’ uses denominator A because local authorities do not have responsibility for this for academies[1].
Table 2, below, summarises the basic structure of denominators A, B and C (the ‘pupil number’ denominators). More detail can be found in the explanation following this table[2].
Table 2: structure of pupil number denominators
All pupil number denominators (A, B and C) include:
Table 3: pupil numbers included in denominators A, B and C
Denominator A
All the pupils in Table 3, above, plus:
Table 5: pupil numbers additionally included in denominator B
Denominator C
All the pupils in Table 3, above, plus:
Table 6: pupil numbers additionally included in denominator C
Pupil numbers are based on January 2022 data collections, so they may not match the pupil numbers perfectly for whom planned expenditure is recorded in the s251 budget data. This is the case particularly where schools have opened or closed mid-year, or converted to academy status. As highlighted above, pupils at schools that converted to academy status between the census date and the end of March 2022 are not counted towards the maintained schools only pupil numbers. This counts all pupils at maintained schools as at the end of March 2022, which is consistent with the local authority’s budgetary information for the relevant lines.
The population number denominators (denominators D to G) are derived from the Office for National Statistic’s (ONS’s) mid-year population projections, which are based on population data from mid-2018.
Please note that the denominators for the Early Years Benchmarking table are calculated using a different method. The denominator for the average hourly funding rates for early years are based on the planned hours as reported by local authorities in their s251 budget.
This table provides information on changes in local authorities’ planned expenditure on education between the 2021 to 2022 financial year and 2022 to 2023 financial year for selected expenditure categories.
As highlighted in the introduction, the comparisons for West Northamptonshire are not included in this table for 2022 to 2023. The West Northamptonshire data was suppressed from the 2021 to 2022 publication and therefore cannot be used to create a comparison to the 2022 to 2023 financial year.
The high needs budget (column 2) consists of the sum of various lines relating to the high needs budget.
The compositions of the selected expenditure categories are given below in Table 7, for ease of reference.
Table 7: budget lines used for comparison in year-on-year table
There are also columns showing the percentage change in three of the denominators between the 2021 to 2022 financial year and the 2022 to 2023 financial year. These are 3 to 19 maintained schools only (denominator A), 3 to 19 maintained schools and academies (denominator B) and 0 to 19 population (denominator E). Any large decreases in ‘maintained schools only’ pupil numbers are likely to be because schools have converted to academy status.
If the underlying cash amounts are very small, a relatively small increase or decrease between years can result in a large percentage change. The average size (noted at the top of each column), together with the values on the per pupil table, give a general indication of the relative size of planned expenditure on these budget items. Year-on-year changes could also be a result of accounting changes or because of a local authority delegating increased levels of expenditure to its schools.
This table provides additional information for schools forums and authorities and draws data from a number of sources. Further information about the columns in this table is given below.
Table 8: columns of the additional information table
[1] Academies receive funding for this as part of their allocations direct from the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA).
[2] The pupil count will be based on Headcount (the number of pupils), or full time equivalent pupils according to the number of funded hours.
[3] For the schools census, the counts for pupils less than 4 years old were recorded in part time equivalent format for the first time in 2018. This includes universal hours entitlement, as well as additional hours entitlement. For the benchmarking tables, these pupil numbers are converted to full time equivalent (i.e. Part Time Equivalent x 0.6) before adding to the full time equivalent pupil numbers for ages 4 and over.
[4] Maintained as at 31 March 2022. Excludes city technology colleges (CTCs).
[5] For the school level annual schools census (SLASC), the pupils are counted using full time equivalent numbers for pupils less than 4 years old, and headcount for pupils aged 4 and over.
[6] For the alternative provision (AP) census, the pupils are counted using full time equivalent numbers for pupils less than 4 years old, and headcount for pupils aged 4 and over.
[7] For the early years schools census, pupil numbers were recorded in part time equivalent format for the first time in 2018. This includes universal hours entitlement, as well as additional hours entitlement for 3 and 4 year olds. For the benchmarking tables, these pupil numbers are converted to full time equivalent (i.e. part time equivalent x 0.6) before adding to the full time equivalent pupil numbers for the denominators.
[8] Pupils aged 2 receiving education in private, voluntary and independent early years settings are included in the count because they are entitled to free education paid for by local authorities.
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