Guidance

Post-16 schools budget grant methodology: September 2024 to March 2025

Published 25 September 2024

Applies to England

1. Introduction 

This guidance sets out the methodology for the post -16 schools budget grant.   

We announced on 29 July 2024, almost £1.2 billion of additional funding for schools to cover the pay award for teachers and support staff in financial year 2024 to 2025.  

We will allocate £1.1 billion of this funding through the core schools budget grant to support schools. Additional funding of £34 million for early years settings will be distributed (CSBG) through the early years budget grant (EYBG), reflecting the methodology used in the early years teachers’ pay grant (EY TPAG) in 2023 to 2024.  

We will allocate funding for post-16 of £63 million separately, through the post-16 schools budget grant. It will help schools and academies with their overall costs in the 2024 to 2025 financial year, following confirmation of the 2024 teacher pay award. 

We will allocate this funding to schools and academies providing 16 to 19 education. Therefore, we are unable to distribute it through a national rates adjustment. 

This guidance explains how we will allocate the funding for schools and academies with post-16 provision in the 2024 to 2025 financial year.  

2.  Eligibility for the grant 

Mainstream Institutions 

The post-16 schools budget grant will fund the following mainstream settings, for young people aged 16 to 19 and those aged 19 to 24 with an education, health and care (EHC) plan:  

• maintained schools and academy sixth forms 

• 16 to 19 academies 

Special schools and non-maintained special schools (NMSS)   

CSBG will fund the following settings for their post-16 places: 

• special academies and free schools   

• NMSS   

3.  Payments 

 We will pay  the post-16 schools budget grant for the period from September 2024 to March 2025.

We expect to pay the grant in:  

• November 2024 for local authorities  

• December 2024 for academies   

There will be one payment to cover the 2024 to 2025 financial year.  

We will pay funding for maintained schools to local authorities, who will be required to pay it to individual schools at the allocated amount. We will pay 16 to 19 academies the allocated amount directly.  

Payments made in November and December will cover the period from September 2024 to March 2025. All funding decisions from April 2025 will be subject to the outcome of the spending review. We expect to provide an update in the autumn.  

4. Allocation calculation 

We will calculate the grant by: 

1: Applying a percentage uplift of 3.65% to all eligible institutions’ total programme funding. The amount that we have used can be found on the 16 to 19 revenue funding statement for academic year 2024 to 2025. We will total the following values, where relevant:

• core programme funding
• condition of funding adjustment
• advanced maths premium
• core maths premium
• high value courses premium
• T Level industry placement  

2: Using seven twelfths of the total of the programme funding representing the period September to March for which the grant will cover.   

We will publish the grant allocations at institutional level by October 2024.

5. Academies funded on estimates 

For the small number of academies that are funded on estimated numbers, we will not recalculate the grant following the review of census and individualised learner record (ILR) data returns used to compare actual student numbers with estimated ones. 

6. In year growth  

We will not recalculate the grant following the exceptional in year growth exercise which is carried out based on the first data return of the academic year.  

7. Contact Us 

If you have any questions after reading this guidance, please contact us using our customer help portal.