This is the amount of money a council's schools budget started the year with — either savings left over or debt carried in from the previous year. It matters because it shows whether a council began the year already in the red on the money the government gives it to run schools and support children with special educational needs. A positive number here means the council started with money in hand; a negative number means it started the year already owing money.
| name | dsg_balance_bfwd |
|---|---|
| dataset | 05-dsg-send-deficits |
| kind | extracted |
| type | numeric |
| unit | GBP |
| grain | local authority x financial year |
| role | feature |
| source | data/data/s251_alleducation_la_regional_national.csv (cp1252); geographic_level == 'Local authority'; category_of_expenditure == '1.9.2 Dedicated Schools Grant brought forward from previous year'; column gross_expenditure |
| period | 2015-16 to 2024-25 |
| missingness | 'x' = not applicable, 'z' = suppressed — never treat as zero |
| score_note | Near-duplicate of dsg_deficit_cum lagged one year with opposite sign; useful mainly as an input. |
| peer_group | council class (district / county / unitary / metropolitan / London) — not yet scored on the leaderboard |
Opening DSG balance brought forward from the previous year. Sign convention is the opposite of 1.9.3: here a negative value means a deficit brought forward (verified by 1.9.3(t) == −1.9.2(t+1)). Used with dsg_deficit_cum to compute the in-year movement of the DSG position.