Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate her Department has made of the average spend on energy per year by schools in the maintained sector in England.

Information on Local Authority maintained school expenditure is collected in Consistent Financial Reporting (CFR) returns and relates to expenditure in the financial year. This information is subsequently published on the schools financial benchmarking website, which can be accessed here: https://schools-financial-benchmarking.service.gov.uk/. This information is also published in the annual Local Authority and school expenditure official statistic, which is accessible here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/la-and-school-expenditure. Spending on energy is identified in the line ‘E16: energy’ in the CFR return. National figures for school expenditure on energy for recent years can be found at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/a8a474ba-c470-45a3-bb48-08db839e0283.

In considering the affordability of the recent teachers’ pay award, the Department has assumed schools’ energy costs for the 2023/24 financial year to be approximately £750 million higher than in the 2021/22 financial year, which represents a 125% increase.

In July this year, the Department announced an additional £525 million of funding to support schools with the teachers’ pay award in 2023/24, and £900 million in 2024/25. This is on top of the additional £2 billion in each of 2023/24 and 2024/25 already announced at the Autumn Statement last year. This additional funding means that school funding will be over £59.6 billion next year, the highest ever level in real terms per pupil, as measured by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. This additional funding will enable head teachers to continue to invest in the areas that the Department knows positively impact educational attainment, including high quality teaching and targeted support to the children who need it most. It will also help schools to manage higher costs, including higher energy bills.