NI Education: Pupil spending 'similar to England and Wales'

The amount spent on each school pupil's education in Northern Ireland is similar to England and Wales, a new analysis suggests.

That is according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), one of the UK's leading economic research institutes.

The IFS said that about £7,200 was spent on each pupil in Northern Ireland, England and Wales in 2022-23.

But it said there was "uncertainty" over future school funding in NI due to "signals of budget cuts".

It also suggested that extra money for schemes set up during the Covid-19 pandemic was responsible for some of the increased spending in 2022-23.

The Department of Education (DE) has recently stopped a number of those schemes to save money.

That included so-called holiday hunger payments and counselling for primary school children.

On Thursday, the department also told schools that the long-running Extended Schools Scheme, which provided extra support to disadvantaged pupils, would end in June.

'Spending growth in real terms'

A previous report by the IFS in 2021 had suggested that Northern Ireland spent less on each school pupil's education than any other part of the UK.

But in its latest analysis which compares school spending across the UK, the IFS said that Northern Ireland spent similar amounts to England and Wales per pupil in 2022-23.

Spending in Scotland was the highest in the UK, with about £8,500 spent per pupil in 2022-23, about £1,300 more than in Northern Ireland, England or Wales.

But in Northern Ireland, according to the IFS, spending per pupil "grew by 11% in real terms between 2018-19 and 2022-23" after falling for almost a decade.

The IFS analysis suggests two main reasons why the money spent on each pupil's education in Northern Ireland has risen.

The report's author said there were strong signals of budget cuts coming for 2023-24

The previous analysis by the IFS in 2021 was completed before extra funding for teacher pay rises in 2019 and 2020 was agreed.

Teachers eventually received a 2% pay increase for 2019-20 and 2% again in 2020-21.

However, there has since been stalemate over a pay deal for teachers, which has led to strike action by unions.

In the two years of the pandemic from 2020 to 2022, the IFS also said that about £790 per pupil per year was spent in Northern Ireland in extra Covid-related funding for schools.

That included funding for the "holiday hunger" scheme to provide free school meal payments during holidays and the Engage programme, both of which have now been cut.

As a result the author of the IFS study, Luke Sibieta, said that although recent increases in school spending "have just about reversed past cuts" in Northern Ireland, "there are strong signals of budget cuts" for 2023-24.

The IFS study was funded by the Nuffield Foundation.