In the year when education was turned upside down by the first Covid national lockdown, new figures show that per pupil spend on primary and secondary education actually fell in real terms.

The Scottish government says it has invested almost £500 million of additional funding in education in 2020-21 and 2021-22 in a bid to support recovery from the pandemic, including £240 million to recruit extra staff.

But new figures generated by councils in a bid to “drive improvement” show that, in 2020-21, the average spend per primary pupil fell by £75 in real terms on the previous year, and the average spend per secondary pupil dropped by £411 in real terms.

• Research: Scotland spends more on schools than other UK nations
• Analysis: Warning of school funding cuts this year
• Attainment challenge: Schools’ financial reality under new attainment plan
• Long read: Two years of Covid - the view from inside schools

• Teacher pay: What the parties said at EIS local election hustings

• Scottish council elections 2022: Key manifesto promises on education

In primary the per pupil spend went from £5,972 in 2019-20 to £5,897 in 2020-21, a decrease of 1.3 per cent, finds the National Benchmarking Overview Report 2020-21.

In secondary, the report find, the per pupil spend went from £8,040 in 2019-20 to £7,629 in 2020-21, a fall of 5.1 per cent.

In the longer term, from 2010-11 to 2020-21, the spend per primary pupil in Scotland has fallen by £140 (a 2.3 per cent reduction) and by £342 per secondary pupil (a 4.3 per cent reduction).

The report - from the Improvement Service which is the national improvement organisation for local government in Scotland - said that the real-terms reduction in expenditure per pupil in 2020-21 was “counter to the increasing trend in recent years”, which had come about mainly because of investment in the three year teacher pay deal struck in 2019 and the Scottish Attainment Challenge.

It added: “The reduction in real terms expenditure observed in 2020-21 is driven by Covid-19-related inflation experienced during 2020-21, which was significantly higher than in previous years. Adjusting for this exceptional inflation rate, the previous trend of increased expenditure continues for both primary and secondary education (increasing by 1.5 per cent and 1.9 per cent respectively).”

The report goes on to highlight the “considerable” variation in spending between councils - although it does also say that this is “narrowing”.  

It finds that some authorities spend almost twice as much per pupil on education and that while on average the spend per pupil reduced in Scotland in 2020-21, this was not the case for all local authorities.

Almost all councils reported a reduction in secondary spending, but only half of councils reported a reduction in primary.

The report says: “In primary education, costs [per pupil] range from £5,273 to £9,915 (£5,273 to £7,423 excluding islands) while in secondary the range is £6,789 to £11,953 (£6,789 to £10,441 excluding islands).”

Responding to the figures, a Scottish government spokesperson referenced an Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) report published last year that found Scotland spends more on schools per pupils than any other UK nation.

The IFS research found that Scotland was spending £800 more than the average spend per pupil in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

However, the IFS also said that the impact of the increased spending on outcomes in Scotland was unclear. It was also “a major cause for concern” that funding for education-recovery programmes in response to the pandemic was much lower across all four UK nations than those being implemented in comparable countries.

The Scottish government spokesperson said: “In 2021-22 school spending per pupil was over £800 higher in Scotland than in any other country in the UK and our continued investment in education means teacher numbers are at their highest since 2008 and class sizes are falling and remain the lowest in the UK.

“It is the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them, including services such as education.

“The 2022-23 budget will see record investment in education and resource and capital spending is up almost £200 million - one of the biggest rises in the history of the Scottish Parliament. Our investment of £145.5 million will also ensure the sustained employment of additional teachers and classrooms assistants, the biggest increase to support teacher recruitment since 2007.”

The figures follow a debate in the Scottish Parliament last week on reducing the cost of the school day for low-income families, when education secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville highlighted the government’s continued investment in the Scottish Attainment Challenge; the removal of music charges; its plans for universal free school meals in primary; and the government’s promise that every pupil in Scotland will have access to both a device and connectivity by the end of the current session of the Parliament, in 2026.

She said that almost 280,000 devices had been distributed to date; there are around 700,000 pupils in Scotland.

However, Oliver Mundell, Conservative MSP and shadow education secretary, accused the government of announcing “an endless stream of policies” and “lots of alleged new funding” at the same time as “core school budgets are being squeezed to the point at which stationery and other basic equipment are being topped up by teachers and charitable sources”.