Scottish school spending, teachers and pupil numbers

15th February 2025

Scotland's schools are relatively well funded. Falling pupil rolls and workforce planning represent both challenges and opportunities going forwards.

At just under £8 billion, spending on schools and childcare is the second-largest area of public service spending in Scotland, behind spending on health. While councils rather than the Scottish Government itself determine how much to spend on schools, they do so in the context of a funding and policy environment shaped by the Scottish Budget.

Policymakers in Scotland face a number of major challenges. As a result of demographic change, the number of pupils is declining over the long run, which might make some schools uneconomical in the future. These trends appear even more challenging in rural and island areas. Recently, the Scottish Government has been seeking to maintain teacher numbers. In the long run, however, it might become increasingly expensive, and even unsustainable, to maintain teacher and school numbers as they are. Scotland's performance on international PISA tests has also been in decline, particularly in maths and science, and this has been ascribed to the introduction of the Curriculum for Excellence from 2010 onwards (Paterson, 2023).

With this context in mind, this chapter starts in Section 4.1 by describing trends in spending and spending per pupil, including comparisons with England. It then details trends in teacher and pupil numbers in Section 4.2. Section 4.3 describes the overall challenges and trade-offs facing policymakers in Scotland over the next few years, including for this and future Budget cycles. Section 4.4 provides a brief conclusion.

Key findings
Total spending on schools and early years education in Scotland increased by £1.7 billion or 27% in real terms between 2015-16 and 2023-24. Current plans for 2024-25 imply an effective real-terms freeze in total spending of just over £7.8 billion.

Spending per pupil in Scotland is about £10,100 in 2024-25, which is about 20% higher than the £8,400 per pupil level seen in England. This gap has widened from a difference of about 4% in 2009-10. Partly as a result of this higher spending, class sizes tend to be smaller in Scotland, with a pupil-teacher ratio of about 13 in 2024 compared with 17-19 in the rest of the UK.

Whilst spending per pupil has risen much faster in Scotland (21%) than in England (5%) since 2009-10, the real-terms growth in total schools and early years spending has been remarkably similar at 20-21%. All of the faster growth in spending per pupil in Scotland reflects slower growth in pupil numbers (1%) compared with England (13%).

The Scottish Government has set out the goal of increasing teacher numbers by 3,500 to 57,100 by the end of this parliament. In reality, teacher numbers have fallen very slightly and the Scottish Government is currently 3,700 short of this goal. More recently, it has instead emphasised the importance of restoring teacher numbers to 2023 levels after they fell further in 2024.

Pupil numbers have fallen in recent years and are projected to fall by a further 12.5% from 2024 to 2040. As a result, pupil–teacher ratios have remained stable despite recent cuts to teacher numbers. If policymakers chose to freeze teacher numbers over the long run, then the pupil–teacher ratio in mainstream schools would fall from 14 to 12 by 2040, lower than at any point in recent history.

Alternatively, the fall in pupil numbers could offer councils a chance to make savings. If policymakers chose to freeze pupil–teacher ratios at 2024 levels, then teacher numbers could drop by 1,000, which would generate in-year savings of about £65–120 million by 2027. Cutting teacher numbers can be challenging in practical terms, however, as it requires reducing the number of classes or schools.

Conclusion From the Report
Scotland has significantly increased spending on schools and early years education over the last six years. It spends 20% more per pupil than England and has substantially lower pupil–teacher ratios. The Scottish Government has also made repeated commitments to increase teacher numbers, which having not been met were subsequently revised to maintaining teacher numbers.
This is in the context of falls in pupil numbers across Scotland, which seem to be more pronounced in rural and island areas. There is also continued concern about the declining
educational performance of Scottish pupils. The evidence suggests there are unlikely to be strong benefits from lower class sizes. Maintaining teacher numbers is also likely to get more expensive over time, just as the trade-offs facing the Scottish Government and local councils become even more challenging. Cutting teacher numbers is not without practical challenge, however, as it would likely involve amalgamating classes or closing schools.

Whilst there may be some clear attractions to avoiding cuts to teacher numbers in the short run, the Scottish Government's one-size-fits-all approach to maintaining teacher numbers is unlikely to represent value for money over the long run.

Instead, it would be better for local councils to make resource choices that reflect their specific circumstances, challenges and the best ways to deliver schooling locally. The Scottish Government should focus on how to distribute funding
across different public services and areas. For instance, it could target greater resources at rural areas if it wanted to avoid pupils having to travel even further to school.

Read the full report HERE
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