Average spending per State pupil is £8,300 a year!

We are all familiar with this Nulab mantra that they will"raise spending on state school pupils to the same level as that spent on those in private schools", see for example this article on the BBC website from November 2006.

This article falls for the lie* that spending per State pupil is about £5,000, as have so many others, but for sake of argument, let us assume that the figure for the average spend per pupil in private sector is indeed £8,000. This article is a bit more up-to-date and says that average private school fees are £8,000 in the North of England and £11,000 in the South East.

Now, where does this £5,000 figure come from? Well, the Department for Education and Skills' Report for 2007 says, in Table 8.5, that the average spend is £5,290 (including revenue and capital). Hmm. Let's dig a little deeper. Table 8.3 says that total spending on education taking DfES and local authorities together is expected to be £50,424 million in 2007-08 (excluding higher education). This does not include £10,517 million for Teachers' pensions**, which is buried away in Appendix A. Add the two together and call it £61,353 million (England only!).

Table 3.7 says that there are 7,385,000 State school pupils. Divide spending by pupils and we establish that average spending per State school pupil is a princely £8,300 a year!

Furthermore, is it fair to look at average fees in the private sector? Is it not more important to look at the lower end of the scale? Surely, the cheapest private schools must be better than State schools, or nobody would send their children there, would they? If we knock 20% of the average private school fees to guesstimate how much the cheapest private schools cost, then it seems that spending per State pupil already matches fees in the best value private schools.

So, job done, Goblin King! Bravo! You have done what you promised and have also proved beyond any doubt that increasing spending in the State sector, even to private school levels is a waste of money!

Can I have education vouchers for my children now ... please?

* Rather amazingly, schools Minister Jim Knight repeated the same lie in the House of Commons in response to a question from Frank Field, one of his own backbenchers, back in February 2007.

** If you want to argue that Teachers' Pensions in payment are sunk costs, then we could include the actuarial cost of the entitlements that are accruing to today's teaching cohort instead, which is probably double the amount of pensions in payment, which would bring the true average spend to £9,700.

PS, I have posted on this topic before, it's just that I've only just got round to reading the DfES report and crunching the numbers properly.