School funding and educational attainment in adolescence: a longitudinal ecological study of English local...

Adequate education funding is important to reduce the socioeconomic inequality in educational attainment, an important social determinant of health. Over the past decade, there have been reductions in public funding for schools in England, despite the introduction of a national funding formula (NFF) policy, aimed at reducing historical differences in school funding. We assessed the impact of school spending cuts on student attainment at age 16, additionally by deprivation and pre-NFF and post-NFF policy implementation.

Our longitudinal ecological study covers the period 2014/2015 to 2022/2023, analysed at local authority (LA) level. Our exposure was secondary school spending per pupil using school-level data, aggregated by LA and inflation adjusted. Our outcome was General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) attainment using average GCSE Attainment 8 scores across LAs. We used correlated random-effects regression to quantify the association between change in spending and change in GCSE attainment. We additionally analysed the association between spending cuts and attainment by LA deprivation, and before and after the NFF policy.

Between 2015 and 2023, per pupil school spending decreased by 13% from £6367 to £5556, while average GCSE attainment declined by 2.1 points from 48.5 to 46.4. A 10% spending cut was associated with a 0.42-point decrease in average attainment (95% CI 0.19 to 0.66). The estimates are different across LA deprivation quintile-based groups. Most deprived LAs had a greater impact (0.54; 95% CI 0.17 to 0.92), compared with least deprived LAs (-0.04; 95% CI -0.46 to 0.38). The association after the NFF policy was not different from the pre-NFF period (p=0.639).

School spending cuts were associated with decreased GCSE attainment across England, with a bigger impact in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas. Against a backdrop of spending cuts, NFF introduction did not narrow inequities in attainment. More equitable school investment is critical to improving attainment and reducing inequalities across the life course.