In October 1996, the Centre for Policy Studies published the first ever tables of school funding. They illustrated that individual Local Education Authorities (LEAs) on average deducted over 26% of total school spending. The worst LEA took as much as 39%. It was suggested that the complexity of the system had enabled LEAs to disguise the true extent of their extravagance. The pamphlet – not unreasonably – called for the introduction of clarity into the system by which LEAs and schools were allocated their funds.
