National Insurance contributions (NICs) grant and early years National Insurance contributions (EY NICs) grant for 2025 to 2026
Guidance for schools and local authorities on the National Insurance contributions (NICs) grants for financial year 2025 to 2026.
Applies to England
Documents
Details
This guidance is for:
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local authorities
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school leaders
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governing bodies and their representatives
It relates to local authority maintained schools, academies (including free schools), maintained nursery schools and school-based early years provision, and local authorities employing centrally employed teachers (CETs) and support staff in England.
The Department for Education (DfE) will provide over £930 million to support mainstream schools (in respect of their 5 to 16 provision) and high needs settings with the increase to employers’ National Insurance contributions (NICs) from April 2025. NICs funding for high needs settings will be provided through the core schools budget grant (CSBG) in 2025 to 2026, rather than through the NICs grant.
We have published the funding rates for mainstream schools and academies, maintained nursery schools and school-based early years provision, alongside information for local authorities employing CETs and support staff in the methodology document. We expect to publish allocations for schools and high needs settings in May 2025, with updated allocations for high needs settings and new and growing schools in March 2026.
We have also published a calculator tool for mainstream schools and academies to estimate their NICs grant funding for financial year 2025 to 2026. 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.
We are also providing £25 million in respect of schools with early years provision and £155 million for post-16 schools and academies and further education colleges. Taken together, this is an increase of over £1 billion. Additional funding for early years will be distributed through the early years National Insurance contributions (EY NICs) grant. Early years funding rates can be found in the methodology document. Funding for post-16 provision will be allocated through the post-16 NICs grant.
Methodology
This document sets out the methodology for the NICs grant and EY NICs grant. This includes guidance on how we will allocate funding for financial year 2025 to 2026: for mainstream schools (for the 5 to 16 year-old age range); for maintained nursery schools and school-based early years provision; and for local authorities with centrally employed teachers and support staff.
For the first time, we are providing additional grant funding for mainstream schools and academies with special units and resourced provision (SURPs). This funding will support the higher staffing costs that schools with SURPs typically face. Details of how we will allocate this funding can be found in the methodology document.
The funding for mainstream primary, secondary and all-through schools will be incorporated into core budget allocations for 2026 to 2027, by being rolled into the schools national funding formula (NFF) for 2026 to 2027. We will ensure that the usual appropriate arrangements are in place for academies, to ensure that they continue to receive support in the period April to August 2026, given their funding cycle follows the academic year.
Conditions of grant
We expect to publish the conditions of grant for these grants in May 2025, alongside allocations.
Allocations
We expect to publish allocations in May 2025, for payment in September 2025, with updated allocations for new and growing schools in February 2026.