The Department for Education was reprimanded earlier this month by the Statistics regulator for making incorrect claims about spending on schools. In true “Thick of It” style, the schools minister claimed on the Today programme that spending was on record levels, but was found out later by an eagle-eyed BBC journalist, Sean Coughlan. The figures used by the DFE included student loans and private school fees so were hardly an accurate picture of state school spending. Following the intervention by the statistics regulator, the DfE’s permanent secretary has apologised and promised to do better.
This story is already old news but has probably left some of us with a sense of scepticism about official data. However, it’s important that we don’t miss what the spending numbers are telling us because there’s an important point about two different measurements of education spending that have some telling messages about our society. The two measurements are public spending on education as a share of the economy (GDP) and total education spending as a proportion of the same figure.
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