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Primary Schools

Volume 448: debated on Thursday 6 July 2006

To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills (1) what the most recent average cost per annum was of educating a child at primary school in England; (82076)

(2) what the most recent average cost per annum was of educating a child at primary school in each local education authority area in England;

(3) what the most recent figures are for the average cost per annum of educating a child at primary school in (a) rural and village areas and (b) town and city areas in England.

The available information is given in the following table.

Primary school based expenditure1 per pupil2

£

In England during the 2004-05 financial year

£ per pupil3

2,910

In 2004-05 financial year

Barking and Dagenham

3,150

Barnet

3,280

Barnsley

2,910

Bath and North East Somerset

2,850

Bedfordshire

2,830

Bexley

2,810

Birmingham

3,200

Blackburn and Darwen

2,910

Blackpool

2,880

Bolton

2,760

Bournemouth

2,670

Bracknell Forest

2,730

Bradford

3,070

Brent

3,230

Brighton and Hove

2,820

Bromley

2,690

Buckinghamshire

2,740

Bury

2,660

Calderdale

2,940

Cambridgeshire

2,720

Camden

4,120

Cheshire

2,640

City of Bristol

2,860

City of Kingston-Upon-Hull

2,990

City of London

4,990

Cornwall

2,810

Coventry

3,010

Croydon

3,060

Cumbria

2,870

Darlington

2,710

Derby

2,940

Derbyshire

2,630

Devon

2,790

Doncaster

2,860

Dorset

2,790

Dudley

2,760

Durham

3,000

Ealing

3,330

East Riding of Yorkshire

2,760

East Sussex

2,830

Enfield

3,270

Essex

2,900

Gateshead

2,850

Gloucestershire

2,720

Greenwich

3,530

Hackney

4,010

Halton

2,910

Hammersmith and Fulham

3,800

Hampshire

2,850

Haringey

3,590

Harrow

3,100

Hartlepool

2,840

Havering

2,920

Herefordshire

2,780

Hertfordshire

2,780

Hillingdon

2,920

Hounslow

3,160

Isle of Wight

3,000

Isles of Scilly

7,280

Islington

3,760

Kensington and Chelsea

4,160

Kent

2,770

Kingston upon Thames

3,110

Kirklees

3,060

Knowsley

3,010

Lambeth

4,110

Lancashire

2,900

Leeds

3,010

Leicester

2,990

Leicestershire

2,580

Lewisham

3,800

Lincolnshire

2,600

Liverpool

3,100

Luton

3,100

Manchester

3,030

Medway

3,050

Merton

3,200

Middlesbrough

2,980

Milton Keynes

2,760

Newcastle upon Tyne

2,840

Newham

3,630

Norfolk

2,770

North East Lincolnshire

2,920

North Lincolnshire

2,840

North Somerset

2,650

North Tyneside

2,760

North Yorkshire

2,890

Northamptonshire

2,720

Northumberland

2,940

Nottingham City

3,410

Nottinghamshire

2,900

Oldham

2,740

Oxfordshire

2,790

Peterborough

2,890

Plymouth

2,800

Poole

2,620

Portsmouth

3,070

Reading

2,720

Redbridge

2,830

Redcar and Cleveland

2.940

Richmond upon Thames

3,030

Rochdale

2,910

Rotherham

2,820

Rutland

2,950

Salford

2,920

Sandwell

3,010

Sefton

2,980

Sheffield

2,780

Shropshire

2,600

Slough

2,990

Solihull

2,580

Somerset

2,810

South Gloucestershire

2,610

South Tyneside

2,970

Southampton

3,170

Southend

2,860

Southwark

3,970

St. Helens

2,790

Staffordshire

2,620

Stockport

2,720

Stockton-on-Tees

2,810

Stoke on Trent

2,730

Suffolk

2,920

Sunderland

2,840

Surrey

2,790

Sutton

2,870

Swindon

2,630

Tameside

2,750

Telford and Wrekin

2.660

Thurrock

2,940

Torbay

2,730

Tower Hamlets

4,300

Trafford

2,500

Wakefield

2,810

Walsall

2,770

Waltham Forest

3,390

Wandsworth

3,630

Warrington

2,630

Warwickshire

2,670

West Berkshire

2,840

West Sussex

2,780

Westminster

3,800

Wigan

2,780

Wiltshire

2,670

Windsor and Maidenhead

2,870

Wirral

2,730

Wokingham

2,650

Wolverhampton

2,810

Worcestershire

2,740

York

2,680

In urban and rural schools3 in England during the2004-05 financial year

Urban primary schools4, 5

2,920

Rural primary schools4, 5

2,900

1 School based expenditure includes only expenditure incurred directly by local authority schools. This includes the pay of teachers and school-based support staff, school premises costs, books and equipment, and certain other supplies and services, less any capital items funded from recurrent spending and income from sales, fees and charges and rents and rates. This excludes the central cost of support services such as home to school transport, local authority administration and the financing of capital expenditure. This is drawn from the 2004-05 Section 52 Outturn Statement (Table A line 50).

2 Pupil numbers include only those pupils attending local authority maintained primary schools and are drawn from the DfES Annual Schools Census adjusted to be on a financial year basis.

3 Figures are rounded to the nearest 10. Cash terms figures as reported by local authorities as at 30 June 2006.

4 The urban/rural classification is drawn from the Edubase (the DfES database of educational establishments). As at 30th June 2006, the database did not hold an urban/rural classification for 32 of the 17,864 primary schools included on local authorities' 2004-05 Section 52 Outturn Statements.

5 Rural primary schools are on average much smaller than those in urban areas. Funding to offset diseconomies of scale therefore increases the amount spent in rural primary schools to a level very close to urban schools.