Calculating the cost of lessons and courses

See how to calculate the cost of lessons and courses to help budget for your curriculum. You'll find variables to take into account and suggested methods to use.

Last reviewed on 1 February 2022
School types: All · School phases: All
Ref: 9557
Contents
  1. Costing and ICFP
  2. No single method for calculating the cost of a lesson
  3. Methods to calculate lesson and course costs
  4. Get an initial picture of whether a course is viable
  5. Methods for costing the curriculum per Key Stage

Costing and ICFP

Understanding the cost of your curriculum is a key part of integrated curriculum financial planning (ICFP) – the government's recommended budget planning approach for schools.

Read more about ICFP in our other article. You can use one of the free tools or paid services mentioned there to help improve your school’s overall financial efficiency and maximise your resources.

Alternatively, if you just want to manually check how much your lessons and courses in particular are likely to cost you, follow our associate experts’ guidance below.

No single method for calculating the cost of a lesson

This is because there are many variables to take into account. Depending on the purpose of calculation, you might want to consider some but not others.

For example:

The make-up of your school's staff

The greater your school's expenditure on teaching staff salaries, the higher the average cost of each lesson or course.