Education spending pressures and challenges

Following three highly successful Nuffield Foundation funded annual reports and other associated outputs between 2018 and 2020, the aim of this project is to produce three further annual reports starting in 2021. These reports will deliver clear, up-to-date and impartial analyses of spending across each phase of education, from preschool through primary and secondary to further and higher education. In doing so, key issues and challenges will be raised and discussed.

Providing unbiased figures and analysis is crucial in today’s environment, given the combination of unprecedented pressure on spending and large changes in established funding systems. The annual reports will provide the ingredients for improved policy decisions and public debate on education spending.

The project team will continue to build on the findings of earlier work that examined the shape of public spending on education, which provided policy makers, researchers and educators with a consistent picture of spending across each stage of education, including per-student data and longer-term trends. The annual reports provide more detailed analyses with each report including a dedicated focus on one phase of education for example early years or further education. These special features will be underpinned by in-depth research and synthesis.

To extend the impact of this work, the team will complement their annual reports with more frequent, focused outputs throughout the year. These will contain detailed analysis on the challenges facing each stage of education and timely updates to headline figures on per-pupil spending. This work will in time be curated on a dedicated microsite to ensure all materials are easily accessible from a single place.