Recent Release | 14 Feb 2023

The Impact of HMC Schools on the UK Economy

Doug Godden

Lead Economist

Oxford Economics undertook a study for HMC, the professional association of school heads, assessing the impact of their schools on the UK economy in 2021, and on the environment in recent years.

Taking direct, supply chain (‘indirect’), and wage-funded expenditure (‘induced’) impacts into account, HMC schools were found to have contributed £7.3 billion to the ‘gross value added’ measure of UK production (GVA) in that year. This was associated with 142,000 jobs, and £2.2 billion in UK tax revenues of all kinds. Within those totals, the direct GVA of HMC schools themselves amounted to £3.6 billion, associated with 76,000 jobs, and £1.0 billion in taxes. All of these figures would have been even higher had it not been for the restrictions on activity caused by the Covid pandemic, which resulted in fee discounts and reduced school spending.


In addition to the tax revenues generated, HMC schools are estimated to have saved the UK taxpayer £1.8 billion in 2021, as a result of educating some 227,000 pupils who would otherwise have been eligible for a UK state school place.


In terms of environmental impacts, HMC schools and their global supply chain were found to be responsible for 437,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in 2021, in terms of the standard ‘carbon dioxide equivalent’ or ‘CO2e’ measure. Some 294,000 tonnes of that occurred in the UK, accounting for 0.07% of national emissions in that year. As HMC schools and their UK supply chain accounted for 0.21% of UK GVA in the same year, their “emissions intensity”—emissions per pound of GVA—was just one third of the national average. The study also found the schools’ emissions intensity to have fallen by 28% since 2015.

Read the report

About the team

Our economic consulting team are world leaders in quantitative economic analysis, working with clients around the globe and across sectors to build models, forecast markets and evaluate interventions using state-of-the art techniques. Lead consultants on this project were:

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