Guidance

Teachers' pay additional grant 2024 to 2025: conditions of grant

Updated 23 October 2024

Applies to England

1. Introduction

In July 2023, alongside the increase for last financial year, we announced an additional £900 million in 2024 to 2025 to support schools with the 2023 teachers’ pay award; with over £825 million going to mainstream schools and specialist settings.

The Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) will pay the teachers’ pay additional grant (TPAG) funding to local authorities for mainstream maintained schools and directly to academies on behalf of the Secretary of State for Education.

For maintained special schools and alternative provision, special and alternative provision academies, and hospital schools,  ESFA will pay the TPAG funding to local authorities.

Non-maintained special schools (NMSS) will be funded directly by ESFA.

The following terms and conditions apply to TPAG for the financial year 2024 to 2025.

For mainstream school settings, the funding will be rolled into the schools national funding formula (NFF) for 2025 to 2026. We will confirm the approach for specialist settings in due course.

2. Allocation and payment to mainstream schools

Local authorities must pay to each:

• maintained primary and secondary school
• all through maintained school

which they are responsible for maintaining, the allocation amounts shown in the school level allocations.

Local authorities must comply with the condition above irrespective of any deficit relating to the expenditure of the school’s budget share.

Mainstream academies will receive their funding direct from ESFA.

In all settings TPAG funding for mainstream schools is not part of schools’ budget shares and is not part of the individual schools’ budget. It is not to be counted for the purpose of calculating the minimum funding guarantee.

Local authorities should pay the instalments of TPAG allocations to any and all schools listed as maintained schools in the local authority area on the relevant allocation spreadsheet.

In a small number of cases, schools that convert to academy status after the allocations spreadsheet for a given instalment of the grant is produced, will still be listed as local authority maintained schools on the allocations spreadsheet. In such cases, the local authority should still pass the funding listed on the spreadsheet to the successor academy. EFSA will then pay any subsequent instalments of the grant to the academy.

If a school is closing in the 2024 to 2025 financial year, ESFA’s TPAG allocations to local authorities are calculated pro-rata for the portion of the funding year that the school is open. Local authorities should therefore pay the pro-rata sum listed for the school on the allocations spreadsheet for the relevant payment period.

3. Allocation and payment to specialist settings

Local authorities must pay TPAG funding to each:

• maintained special school
• special academy and free school
• pupil referral unit (PRU) maintained by a local authority (pre-16 provision only)
• AP academy and free school (pre-16 provision only)
• maintained hospital school and the equivalent academy

which they are responsible for maintaining, they previously maintained but is now an academy and, in the case of a free school, which is located in their area. Local authorities will not receive an allocation for NMSS, who will be funded directly by ESFA.

Local authorities must comply with the following requirements in setting their local methodologies for how they will pass on TPAG funding to the eligible school types as listed above.

Local authorities must:

• pass on 100% of the TPAG funding that is published for their respective local authority to the eligible school types as listed above
• ensure that all eligible schools receive a funding allocation through TPAG in the period April 2024 to March 2025
• have transparent criteria to distribute funding to individual schools, treating academies and maintained schools the same
• consult with eligible schools before deciding their methodology for allocating TPAG funding

Local authorities should seek to swiftly confirm the allocations for eligible schools to provide institutions with the earliest possible certainty over their budgets.

NMSS will receive their funding direct from ESFA.

TPAG funding is not to be counted for the purpose of calculating the minimum funding guarantee for special schools.

4. Permitted use of TPAG funds

Academies (including eligible specialist settings) and NMSS must only spend TPAG funds for the purposes of the school, and local authorities must ensure that their maintained schools (including eligible specialist settings) only spend TPAG funds for the purposes of the school.

In all settings TPAG funds do not have to be spent by schools in the financial year beginning April 2024. Schools may carry some or all of the TPAG funds forward to future financial years.

5. Certification

Each local authority will be required to certify to ESFA that they have complied with these terms and conditions.

ESFA will set out the arrangements for certification in the spring.

6. Variation

The basis for allocation of this grant may be varied by the Secretary of State from those set out above.

7. Overpayments 

Any overpayment of TPAG funding for schools by ESFA to a local authority, academy or NMSS shall be repaid by the authority, academy’s proprietor or NMSS on such terms and conditions as ESFA or the Secretary of State for Education shall determine. 

8. Further information 

Books and other documents and records relating to the recipient’s accounts shall be open to inspection by the Secretary of State and by the Comptroller and Auditor General. 

The Comptroller and Auditor General may, under Section 6 of the National Audit Act 1983, carry out examinations into the economy, efficiency, and effectiveness with which the recipient has used its resources in discharging its grant-aided activities. 

Schools (including academies and NMSS) shall provide information as may be required by the Secretary of State to determine whether they have complied with these conditions.