TweetIn early November, Paul blogged about local authorities submitting shaky figures to the Department for Education, as reported on the Channel 4 blogs.
As Paul quoted and Patrick Worrall stated;
“So to recap, these spending figures don’t actually reflect the real amount of money spent; figures from different councils are not comparable with each other; spending in one year can’t be compared usefully with other years; and the government doesn’t propose to audit the figures or correct them when they’re wrong.”
However, the key issue was that there was no link to the flawed data, stopping further investigation, but now, the individual Workbook budgets are now available online on education.gov.uk, broken down by their area.
The data is openly accessible and viewable by local authority, offering the opportunity to look at which areas have submitted data with falsities, mistakes or miscalculations.
It’s worth taking a look at if you’re curious and want to investigate further, or want to see the stats from your local area.