Spending per Early Learning Childcare (ELC) registration and per school pupil across each Scottish Local Authority: FOI release

Information requested

1. “Spend per pupil Early Learning Childcare (ELC)
2. Spend per pupil at Primary School
3. Spend per pupil at Secondary school

Across each Scottish Local Authority.

1. What extra financial resources are provided to councils with remote rural and/or rural schools within their area. Can this be broken down per each rural/ remote rural school in each council.
2. If such funding exists, can I have how much was provided to each authority per each of the past 5 financial years;

The average pupils per school in

1. ELC
2. Primary
3. Secondary;

broken down by each authority.”

Response

I enclose a copy of most of the information you requested in the format requested.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested. The reason that we don't have some of this information are explained in the response below.

1. Spend per pupil Early Learning
2. Spend per pupil at Primary School
3. Spend per pupil at Secondary school

Across each Scottish Local Authority

Spending per ELC registration and per school pupil have been calculated using finalised 2023-24 local government financial statistics, which are available from: Scottish local government finance statistics (SLGFS) 2023-24: workbooks - gov.scot. These are compared to ELC registrations and school pupil statistics from the 2023 ELC Census and Pupil Census respectively, as these are the most directly comparable to the 2023-24 financial year.

Spending per Early Learning and Childcare (ELC) registration is provided in Table 1 of Annex A.

Please note that the average spending figure per ELC registration presented here differs from the figures provided in the parliamentary question S6W-36497, available from Written question and answer: S6W-36497 | Scottish Parliament Website. This is because S6W-36497 refers to spend per pre- primary place, which is distinct from ELC registrations.

Spending per primary school pupil is provided in Table 2 of Annex A.
Spending per secondary school pupil is provided in Table 3 of Annex A.

Across each Scottish Local Authority

1. What extra financial resources are provided to councils with remote rural and/or rural schools within their area. Can this be broken down per each rural/ remote rural school in each council.
2. If such funding exists, can I have how much was provided to each authority per each of the past 5 financial years;

Although rurality is taken account of in local authority-level allocations, it is not provided at a per school level, and it is not given ‘for’ rural schools. The Scottish Government’s policy towards local authorities’ spending is to allow local authorities the financial freedom to operate independently. As such, the vast majority of funding is provided by means of a block grant. It is then the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them, including on Education, on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities. Ultimately, it is for locally elected representatives to make local decisions on how best to deliver services to their local communities.

Full details of the calculation of the block grant, including those elements that account for rurality, are published in the Scottish Local Government Finance Green Book, available using the following link: Supporting documents - Scottish Local Government Finance - Green Book: 2025-2026 - gov.scot. Previous years’ calculations are available using the following link: Local government finance statistics - gov.scot.

The average pupils per school in

1. ELC
2. Primary
3. Secondary;broken down by each authority.

Average pupils per school for ELC is not possible to provide by school, however in ELC summary statistics, the Scottish Government publishes the number of child registrations and number of centres by local authority. These can both be used to derive the average number of child registrations per ELC centre. Please note that unlike the figures used to calculate spending per pupil, all figures below relate to 2024 and are the most recent data available.

The average number of child registrations per ELC centre is provided in Table 4 of Annex A.

Primary and Secondary school and pupil numbers are available from Pupil Census statistics.

The average number of pupils per primary school is shown in Table 5 of Annex A.

The average number of pupils per secondary school is shown in Table 6 of Annex A.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

FOI 202500468655 - Information Released - Annex A

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