Core schools budget grant (CSBG) 2024 to 2025
Guidance for schools and local authorities on the core school budget grant (CSBG) methodology and rates for September 2024 to March 2025
Applies to England
Documents
Details
This guidance is for:
- local authorities
- school leaders
- 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 school 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 which, as usual, the department will need to agree across government. We know how important these decisions are to schools and are working across government to take them as soon as practicable.
We are providing almost £1.1 billion for mainstream schools, high needs settings, and CETs. We have published the funding rates for mainstream schools, special schools, alternative provision (AP) schools, and hospital schools and CETs in the methodology document. We expect to publish information on allocations, alongside the conditions of grant, in September.
We are also providing £97 million in respect of schools delivering post-16 and early years provision. Additional funding for early years settings will be distributed through the early years budget grant (EYBG), reflecting the methodology used in the early years teachers’ pay grant (EY TPAG) in 2023 to 2024. Funding for post-16 schools will be allocated separately, and further information will be published in due course.
We have published a calculator for mainstream schools and academies to estimate their CSBG allocation for September 2024 to March 2025.
If a school includes an early years or post-16 facility (for example a sixth form) then these pupils should not be included when using the calculator provided, as this tool only estimates the allocation for your 5 to 16 mainstream population. Early years and 16 to 19 allocations will be additional to these.
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 AP schools, including how local authorities will be required to pass that funding on to those schools; and for local authorities with CETs.
We are aware that the full impact of the teacher pay award hits 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 (as well as any appropriate arrangements for academies in the period April to August 2025).
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. 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
We expect to publish the conditions of grant document alongside the allocations in September. It will set out the terms and conditions that local authorities, academies, and NMSS must follow.