1. School based expenditure includes only expenditure incurred directly by the schools. This includes the pay of teachers and school-based support staff, school premises costs, books and equipment, and certain other supplies and services, less any capital items funded from recurrent spending and income from sales, fees and charges and rents and rates. This excludes the central cost of support services such as home to school transport, local authority administration and the financing of capital expenditure.

2. 1999-2000 saw a change in data source when the data collection moved from the RO1 form collected by the ODPM to the Section 52 form from the DFES. 2002-03 saw a further break in the time series following the introduction of Consistent Financial Reporting (CFR) and the associated restructuring of the outturn tables. Each table represents a change in source. From 2002-03 school based expenditure is taken from Section 52 Outturn Table A line 51 net current expenditure (NCE). For 2001-02 and earlier years the expenditure is calculated as lines 1 to 12 less lines 29, 30, 35 and 37. This differs from the old Net Institutional Expenditure (NIE) calculation only in the treatment of meals and milk which is no longer excluded and no adjustments for balances are now made. This is taken from Section 52 Outturn Table 3 for 1999-2000 to 2001-02 and from the RO1 form previously.

3. The calculation for 2002-03 onwards is broadly similar to the calculation in previous years. However, 2001-02 and earlier years includes all premature retirement compensation (PRC) and Crombie payments, mandatory PRC payments and other indirect employee expenses. In 2001-02 this accounted for approximately £70 per pupil. From 2002-03 onwards only the schools element of these categories is included and this accounted for approximately £50 per pupil of the 2002-03 total. Also, for some LAs, expenditure that had previously been attributed to the school sectors was reported within the LA part of the form from 2002-03, though this is not quantifiable from existing sources.

4. Pupil numbers include only those pupils attending maintained establishments within each sector and are drawn from the DFES Annual Schools Census adjusted to be on a financial year basis.

5. Local government reorganisation (LGR) took place during the mid to late 1990's and those LAs that did not exist either pre or post LGR are shaded out for those years.

6. Spending in 1997-98 reflects the transfer of monies from local government to central Government for the nursery vouchers scheme. These were returned to local government from 1998-99.

7. The 1999-2000 figures reflect the return of GM schools to local authority maintenance. Consequently LAs where there entire pupil provision were educated in GM schools will show a unit cost of zero prior to 1999-2000.

8. Expenditure was not distinguished between the pre-primary and primary sectors until the inception of Section 52 for financial year 1999-2000.

9. School based expenditure in LA maintained nursery schools was not recorded in 2002-03 and comparable figures are not available for 2003-04 onwards.

10. Figures are rounded to the nearest £10. Cash terms figures as reported by local authorities as at 30 June 2009.