School funding statistics, Financial year 2023-24 (2024)

Coverage of the data

The data in this section is presented in two ways.

First, if you are interested in seeing the data for an individual school, the easiest way to access this is using the table tool: this can be found higher up this page by selecting ‘Explore data and files’ and then ‘Create your own tables’.

Alternatively, data for all schools can be accessed by downloading the data file (which is in Excel format) associated with this release entitled ‘School funding allocations for 2023-24 (Excel version)’. This can be found by selecting ‘Explore data and files’ and then ‘List of all supporting files’.

The data shows the total funding that has been allocated to each individual mainstream school through several different funding streams for 2023-24. This covers funding allocated to mainstream schools for their running costs for pupils aged 5-16, that was provided through some of the funding streams covered in the other main section of this report, “School revenue funding for 5-16 year olds for 2010-11 to 2024-25”:

• Core funding through the schools block of the dedicated schools grant;
• Pupil premium.

The school funding allocations data also includes several other funding streams for schools that are not included in the figures in the previous section. This funding is provided to schools for specific functions and pupils of other ages in attendance. Detailed school allocations through these funding streams have been previously published for 2023-24, but they are included here to show schools’ data in a single place:

• Universal infant free school meals (UIFSM);
• PE and sport premium;
• Coronavirus (COVID-19) recovery premium funding;
• Mainstream schools additional grant;
• National Tutoring Programme funding.

Funding years

For core funding, the data shows financial year 2023-24 allocations for local authority maintained schools, and academic year 2023/24 allocations for academies (including free schools). This is because these are the time periods for which maintained schools and academies receive their budgets.

For the other grants, the data primarily shows allocations for financial year 2023-24. More information about this data and the different elements of funding presented is provided in the Methodology section.

Consistency with the 2010-11 to 2024-25 time series data

The totals of the figures in this section do not match those for 2023-24 shown in the time series dataset, for several reasons.

First, the figures presented in this section relate to mainstream schools only, whereas the time series dataset also includes funding for age 5-16 pupils attending other types of institution, such as special schools, non-maintained special schools and alternative provision settings.

Second, these school-level figures for 2023-24 include some funding (the PE and sport premium and universal infant free school meals) which are not included in the time series, for the reasons explained above.

Schools included in the data

Please note that schools listed in the data are as at 31 March 2023. The figures do not reflect where schools have changed their name, opened, closed, or have been subject to other changes since that date.

Other publications

For years prior to 2019-20, these data were published by ESFA in a separate annual report ‘Schools block funding allocations’. However, those previous reports presented data for core funding only. The more recent school funding statistics reports also include data on schools’ allocations for the pupil premium, UIFSM and other grants as listed above.

Comparison with national funding formula data

The figures presented here are the funding schools received in 2023-24. These are not the same as illustrative allocations under the national funding formula (NFF) in 2023-24 that the DfE has previously published.

The NFF is a single, national formula which calculates an illustrative allocation for all mainstream schools in England based mainly on their pupils’ needs and characteristics. However, schools’ NFF allocations for 2023-24 were in most cases not exactly the same as the funding they actually received.

For each local authority in England, the schools NFF calculates overall per-pupil amounts at primary and secondary level, which are then multiplied by the latest pupil numbers to give a total allocation to the authority. Each local authority then determines schools’ final allocations for the year through setting a local funding formula.

It is schools’ final funding as indicated by their authority’s local formula which is shown in this report.

Types of schools

The data shows figures for 20,181 mainstream schools in England. Of these, 10,624 are maintained schools, meaning that they are overseen by the local authority, and 9,557 are academies, meaning they operate independently of local authority control and receive their funding directly from the ESFA.

Core funding

The basic entitlement factor in authorities’ local formula gives every school a basic amount of funding for every pupil, and authorities could specify different per-pupil amounts for primary age pupils, for pupils in key stage 3 (years 7 to 9), and for pupils in key stage 4 (years 10 and 11).

Differences between schools’ basic entitlement funding reflect where they had different numbers of pupils and where their respective local authorities decided to set different per-pupil rates in their 2023-24 local formulae.

In their local formula, authorities could also choose to use several other ‘pupil-led factors’ – these are factors where the amount of funding a school receives depends on the number of pupils with appropriate characteristics that attend the school. Descriptions of each factor can be found in the Methodology section.

Figure 2 shows the percentage of schools receiving funding in 2023-24 through each of these other pupil-led factors.

Differences in the amount of funding that schools received through the pupil-led factors in 2023-24 were due to several reasons, such as: where schools had different numbers of pupils who were eligible to attract funding through the factor, and where the local authority set different per-pupil rates in their local formula.

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