Scotland spends more on schools than other UK nations

Spending is over £800 higher per pupil in Scotland than rest of UK – but pandemic recovery funding is lower than in comparable countries

22nd October 2021, 12:01am

Emma Seith

Scotland Spends More On Schools Than Other Uk Nations

Scotland spends more on schools per pupil than any other UK nation, with the biggest factor driving increases in spending in recent years being teacher pay, a new analysis has found.

Teacher pay rises and additional funding during the coronavirus pandemic have reversed real terms spending cuts during the past decade, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said.

Its research found that spending per pupil between 2009-10 and 2014-15 fell by 7 per cent in real terms, but then increased by the same percentage over the subsequent five years.

Background: Progress on closing the attainment gap ‘limited’

News: Is Scottish education ‘stagnant and conformist’?

Need to know: How much are teachers paid in Scotland?

The biggest increase in the Scottish government’s funding for schools was a 6 per cent real-terms rise in 2019-20, amounting to an additional £400 per pupil, driven by a 7 per cent increase of teacher pay scales and a further backdated 3 per cent rise. This means that, in 2021-22, Scotland is spending around £7,600 per pupil.

In England, the figure is £6,700, in Wales £6,600 and in Northern Ireland £6,400.

However, the figure for Scotland, unlike the three other countries, includes Covid-related spending. If that is stripped out to allow a like-for-like comparison with the three other UK nations, Scotland is - according to the IFS research - still likely to be spending £800 more than the average spend in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The author of the research, Luke Sibieta, is a research fellow at IFS and the Education Policy Institute think tank.

Earlier this year, Mr Sibieta was the author of EPI research that also found Scotland had the best-funded education system in the UK - as well as the lowest pupil-teacher ratio and the highest starting salary for teachers.

However, that piece of research also found that it was likely that the English school funding system allocated more funding in total on the basis of social deprivation, and that the impact of Scotland’s higher education spending on outcomes was unclear, given the lack of consistent attainment data across the four nations.

The only real source of comparable data at present, he said, was the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) international comparison of teenagers’ performance in reading, science and maths - the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa).

Of his most recent piece of research, Mr Sibieta said: “Over the last decade, there were cuts to school spending per pupil right across the UK.

“In Scotland, large recent increases mean that spending has more than recovered and core spending per pupil is now likely to be over £800 higher than in the rest of the UK.

“Despite recent increases, spending per pupil in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is still close to or just below levels seen a decade earlier.

“However, it is important to remember higher spending need not automatically translate into better educational outcomes.

“Indeed, international comparisons of test scores suggest numeracy and science scores were declining in high-spending Scotland relative to the OECD average up to 2018.

“It remains to be seen whether extra spending in Scotland since 2018 will arrest this trend.”

Data for the next Pisa survey was due to be gathered this year but it was announced last year that the tests would be delayed owing to Covid and would be sat instead in 2022, with results published in December 2023. The following Pisa survey will then be published in 2026, not 2025.

Josh Hillman, director of education at the Nuffield Foundation, which funded the study, added: “This IFS analysis shows that the increasing divergence in education policy between the four nations of the UK extends to school spending per pupil, where funding to support Scottish pupils has held up better than for their counterparts in the other nations.

“A major cause for concern is that funding for education recovery programmes in response to the pandemic is much lower across all four nations than those being implemented in comparable countries.”