The UK government is part-way through significant cuts in spending on public services as it attempts to deal with the large hole in the UK's public finances. As part of this, grants from the UK Treasury to the Welsh Government have been reduced in real terms each year since 2009-10, and the...

The local government finance system in England is undergoing genuinely revolutionary change. A highly-centralised system of funding, with central government grants allocated on the basis of councils' relative spending need, is set to be replaced by a system where councils as a group are...

The COVID-19 pandemic has dealt a monumental blow to the education of English school children. Over the past 18 months, English school pupils experienced two long periods of nationwide school closures. The first round of universal school closures lasted 10 weeks (from 23 March to 1 June 2020);...

Early education and childcare can have a critical impact both on helping children to develop and in supporting parents (especially mothers) to work. But childcare can also have a significant impact on the disposable income - and, hence, living standards - of families with very young children....

Education spending is the second-largest element of public service spending in the UK behind health, representing about £99 billion in 2020-21 in today's prices or about 4.5% of national income. To make efficient and equitable policy choices, it is crucial to have a clear, consistent picture of...

In our annual series of reports on education spending, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, we bring together data on education spending per student across the life cycle and provide analysis about the major issues facing different sectors. In this year's report for 2020, we update our estimates...