Some Determinants of Variations in Expenditure on Secondary Education

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Abstract
The claims of educational expenditure on the public purse are large and, until recently, have been growing. In a period of increased concern for accountability in the public sector it is not surprising to find attention increasingly directed to this rather neglected aspect of the education service. Two recent publications by the Department of Education and Science, under the title ‘School Standards and Spending’ (DES, 1983, 1984), have addressed what has become the central issue in the current debate: ‘how do the examination results an LEA obtains relate to the spending it incurs on secondary education?’ Both bulletins analyse the examination results of the 96 LEAs in England, but find ‘no clear relationship between these and expenditure’. Other contributors to the debate have, however, been less cautious in their publications of findings which, while agreeing in general with the DES’s finding of ‘little or no relationship’ between examination results and spending, turn this into an attack on the very idea of variability in education expenditure unless it seen to be related to examination success. Thus in their book Standards in English schools Marks, Cox, et al. (1983) asserted that ‘more teachers and more money spent per pupil do not necessarily lead to better examination results’; whilst Lord (1984) claimed that ‘the more spending the worse were the results’.

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