Education and children’s social care budget statements

All local authorities (LAs) are required under section 251 of the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009 to prepare and submit an education and children’s social care budget statement before the beginning of each financial year.

After the end of each financial year they are required to prepare an outturn statement.

Regulatory provisions directly affecting the education content of section 251 budget and outturn statements are also made in the School Finance (England) Regulations.

It is a statutory duty that LAs must publish their budget and outturn statements as and when prescribed in the administrative Direction issued by the Secretary of State for Education.

It is important that schools forums and others can compare funding and methodology between different LAs, so as to inform debate about budget levels and such issues as the balance of funding between early years, primary (reception +), secondary and special schools and therefore all statements are prepared to a common format.

Outturn Statement

The section 251 outturn statement is intended to:

provide schools, parents and others with an interest in education and children services with details about schools and local authority funding and expenditure
provide data for the Departmental Annual Report
inform policy making
inform the Treasury for monitoring purposes
inform Parliament in its role of monitoring the Department's accountability for public funds. MPs ask about school and authority expenditure via the mechanisms of Parliamentary Questions or through the Education Select Committee

Outturn Statement 2020- 21

Outturn Statement 2019- 20

Budget Statement

The size of the school’s budget and the amounts to be given to each factor, depend on budget decisions taken by the local authority before the prescribed period. Budget statements inform schools and the public about the funding plans of the local authority.

The copy of the statement that schools receive for that period is intended to provide a clear picture of the authority's planned spending:

How much the local authority intends to spend on the Non-Schools Education Budget outside the school's budget and other children's social care.
How much the local authority is proposing to retain centrally within the school budget for school services.
How the local formula is working to produce budget shares for each school in the local authority's area.

Schools Block proformas 2020-21

The following documents provide information on the local authorities’ schools block funding formulae for 2020 to 2021 financial year, as at 20 July 2020:

Analysis of local authorities' schools block funding formula

Schools Block funding formulae data file

Schools Block Budget Allocations

The following documents provide information on schools block funding allocations to maintained schools (for 2020 to 2021 financial year) and academies (for 2020 to 2021 academic year):

Schools block data file 2020 to 2021