ABSTRACT
The finance for schools comes from four sources – government grants to the local authority, non-domestic rates, the council tax and income from fees and other direct charges. The largest source is the grant from central government. This is arrived at by assessing how much each authority will need to spend to provide a standard level of service and is known as the Standard Spending Assessment (SSA). The grant is known as the Revenue Support Grant (RSG) and is financed mainly from taxes. It is not a grant specifically for education but is intended to cover all the services provided by the local authority. The way it is spent is a matter for locally elected councillors, advised by their officers.
