Editor's view - A new resource that's on the money

20 July 2012

It's not often I feel moved to say this, but a new resource from the Department for Education is absolutely fascinating!

If you haven't yet discovered the Foundation Years Benchmarking Tool, then do go and have a look - but make sure you've got some spare time because it proves to be quite addictive.

The funding of the free entitlement function, where you can compare different local authorities' spending on early years as a proportion of the Dedicated Schools Grant, the amount spent per child in PVI settings, nursery schools and primary schools, and the amount 'centrally retained' by each authority, is the part that will be leapt upon by settings and councils.

For example, the proportion of the DSG spent on early years varies from 3.3 per cent to 10.9 per cent across the country.

While it is impossible to know the full picture behind the figures, the variations in different authorities that are revealed are extremely interesting.

Nottinghamshire spends roughly the same percentage of its earlyyears budget on each sector (PVI, nursery school or primary school) as the proportion of pupils that each has, and it retains only one per cent.

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