Core schools budget grant (CSBG) 2024 to 2025
Allocations and guidance for schools and local authorities for the core schools budget grant (CSBG) for September 2024 to March 2025.
Applies to England
Documents
Details
This guidance is for:
- local authorities
- school leaders
- school teachers
- governing bodies and their representatives
It relates to local authority-maintained schools, academies (including free schools), hospital schools, non-maintained special schools (NMSS), independent special schools, and local authorities employing centrally employed teachers (CETs) in England.
The core schools budget grant (CSBG) will provide almost £1.1 billion to support schools with their overall costs in the 2024 to 2025 financial year, in particular following confirmation of the 2024 teacher pay award.
This matches what we have calculated is needed to fully fund, at a national level, the teacher pay award and the support staff pay offer in financial year 2024 to 2025, over and above the available headroom in schools’ existing budgets. We recognise the picture will be different for individual schools.
Budgets for 2025 to 2026 are still to be agreed; this includes the 2025 to 2026 core schools budget.
We are also providing £97 million in respect of schools delivering post-16 and early years provision. We will distribute additional funding for early years settings through the early years budget grant (EYBG). We will allocate the post-16 funding though the post-16 schools budget grant.
Methodology
This document sets out the methodology for the CSBG. This includes information on how we will allocate funding for the 7-month period September 2024 to March 2025: for mainstream schools (for the 5 to 16 year-old age range); for special and alternative provision (AP) schools, including how local authorities will be required to pass that funding on to those schools; and for local authorities with CETs.
The CSBG matches what we have calculated is needed to fully fund, at a national level, the teacher pay award and the support staff pay offer in financial year 2024 to 2025, after accounting for the overall available headroom in schools’ existing budgets.
For the support staff offer, the calculation is based on the 12 month period from April 2024 until March 2025, given the pay award runs on a financial year cycle.
For the teacher pay award, the calculation is based on the 7 month period from September 2024 until March 2025, given the pay award runs on an academic year cycle. This is after already accounting for the first 5 months of teacher pay costs in the financial year (April 2024 to August 2024), following the 2023 teacher pay award.
We are aware that the full impact of the teacher pay award is felt across financial years 2024 to 2025 and 2025 to 2026. The CSBG for 2024 to 2025 covers the financial year 2024 to 2025 (first seven twelfths) portion of the award.
We want to reassure schools that we will be taking into account the impact of the full year’s costs of the teacher pay award on schools when considering 2025 to 2026 budgets.
The funding for mainstream primary, secondary and all through schools will be incorporated into core budget allocations for 2025 to 2026, by being rolled into the schools national funding formula for 2025 to 2026.
In financial year 2025 to 2026, we will combine into a single grant to local authorities, the CSBG, teachers’ pay additional grant (TPAG) and teachers’ pension employer contribution grant (TPECG 2024) allocations for special and AP schools and hospital education.
We will ensure that the usual appropriate arrangements are in place for academies, to cover the CSBG in the period April to August 2025, given their funding cycle follows the academic year.
Conditions of grant
This sets out the terms and conditions that local authorities, academies, and NMSS must follow.
Allocations
We have published school and local authority level allocations showing the total funding allocated for September 2024 to March 2025 for mainstream schools, special schools, AP schools, hospital schools and for centrally employed teachers.
Updates to this page
Last updated 2 October 2024 + show all updates
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We have amended the methodology section of the landing page to include more detail about funding for financial year 2025 to 2026. This detail has also been added to sections 3.2 of the methodology document and 1.3 of the conditions of grant.
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We have added the core schools budget grant (CSBG) 2024 to 2025 allocations spreadsheets for mainstream and special schools, and for local authorities with centrally employed teachers. We have also added the conditions of grant.
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First published.