16 to 19 funding allocations

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16 to 19 funding allocations

We calculate funding for institutions using the 16 to 19 funding formula.

Funding allocations are driven by student recruitment and the funding formula includes factors that reflect student retention, higher cost subjects, disadvantaged students and area costs. Our main collection page includes further information about each element within the 16 to 19 funding formula.

We supplement the funding calculated using the 16 to 19 funding formula with additional funding for high needs students and funding that provides financial support to students to help with their education costs.

Information for academic year 2025 to 2026

We’ve published details on the key changes to funding for 2025 to 2026.

Our pages on funding allocation statement guides and allocation calculation toolkits will help you to understand how we’ve calculated your funding.

Allocations timeline

We will publish updates to the timeline as we deliver funding allocations. The latest news column on the timeline shows updates.

Month	Activity	Latest news
December 2024	6 December 2024 is the individualised learner record (ILR) R04 deadline. This is the first 16 to 19 data return for 2025 to 2026.	The R04 data return is now closed.
January 2025	Publication of outcomes of the high needs place change process for 2025 to 2026.	We have published the outcomes.
February 2025	5 February 2025 is the ILR R06 deadline.	The R06 data return is now closed.
March 2025	We will issue supporting guides and allocation calculation toolkits containing funding factors to institutions. We will begin to issue allocations to all institutions and publish supporting guides. We aim to issue the majority of the allocations by the end of the month.
April and May 2025	Business cases must be submitted within 4 weeks of receiving your funding allocation statement for any business cases in relation to a significant data error or exceptional circumstances affecting the allocation. This excludes institutions in scope of the high needs place change process because we opened a 2-week window for enquiries in January 2025. We will review and process business cases and aim to complete these over the summer.
July and August 2025	We will issue funding agreements and contracts to institutions either directly or through the lead contact. Agreements and contracts are then signed and returned by the funded organisation.
August and September 2025	We will make the first payment to local authorities (in respect of schools with sixth forms) and directly to academies, colleges and other institutions.

Business cases for major data errors

You should only submit business cases if you have made a significant error in your 16 to 19 schools census or ILR data. This should be by exception and only after you have received your funding allocation statement.

We have changed the deadline for business cases this year. You must submit a business case within 4 weeks of receiving your funding allocation statement. We will not accept late business cases.

Use our customer help portal to submit a case. Choose the funding and payments option, then allocations and business cases. Do not upload business cases to Document exchange until you have completed this step because we will not see them.

Timelines when submitting a business case

For cases that we receive with full information within 4 weeks of the allocation statement being issued, we aim to communicate outcomes for straightforward cases over the summer.

We will need longer to investigate more complex cases, or cases with missing information, and we will action any adjustments to your allocation as a contract variation.

When not to submit a case

This process does not cover business cases for high needs place funding for institutions that are within scope of the high needs place change notification process.

For institutions returning the ILR, we will not accept business cases where an error in the 2023 to 2024 R04 (or R46) has reduced the ratio for the 2025 to 2026 allocation. This is because any such error will have also resulted in an equivalent increase in the 2024 to 2025 allocation.

From academic year 2026 to 2027, we will only accept business cases affecting that academic year. We will not accept business cases affecting previous years.

How to submit a case

Use our customer help portal to submit a case. Choose the funding and payments option, then allocations and business cases. The head of institution must authorise all business cases.

If you have any queries about using Document exchange, see our Document exchange support guide.

If you do not follow this process and we receive your case after the deadline, we will not be able to accept it.

When appropriate, we will send you a pre-populated template after you contact us to make sure we have all the evidence we need.

We will not accept:

extracts from allocation calculation toolkits with associated corrections
templates from previous years
cases received after the deadline

Thresholds for business cases

We apply standard minimum thresholds to decide whether we will consider a case.

For cases affecting your total programme funding, including your T Level allocation, there must be:

an overall impact of 5% on total programme funding or £100,000, whichever is lower

While this threshold remains the same as last academic year, we will now calculate this using all of the elements included in total programme funding (see ‘Figure 1: 16 to 19 funding formula’).

For cases not covered above, there must be:

an overall impact of 5% of the funding related to that element

For example, if the case relates to discretionary bursary funding, the 5% would be in relation to the total discretionary bursary funding.

We have removed T Level under-delivery tolerances for academic year 2025 to 2026 so we have removed the specific thresholds for T Levels. Institutions will not be financially impacted if they correct their data errors in their autumn returns for academic year 2025 to 2026. We will revise allocations in-year against actual data following the T Level reconciliation.

From 2026 to 2027, we will also change how the threshold works. When we agree a case, we will deduct the threshold and only pay funding over that amount. For example, if the same 5% or £100,000 (whichever is lower) threshold were to remain, institutions will need to fund the first 5% or £100,000 of the error.

Data sources

Data sources for 16 to 19 and post-16 high needs funding for academic year 2025 to 2026

This section sets out the methods we will use to determine the number of students attracting funding in 2025 to 2026. We have set this out by institution type.

From academic year 2025 to 2026, we will include all T Level data in the calculation of funding factors.

Schools, academies, free schools, studio schools and university technical colleges

We base lagged numbers on 2024 to 2025 students in the autumn 2024 census. We fund some academies on estimated numbers where their funding agreement states this.

Further education (FE) colleges and some other FE or higher education institutions

We take the number of eligible students with a reference date of 1 November 2024 based on R04 (2024 to 2025).

We multiply this by the ratio of 1 November to all-year student numbers based on R04 (2023 to 2024) and the R14 return for that year.

We compare this figure with the student numbers calculated from R06 (2024 to 2025), both the year-to-date (as at 1 February) figure and the number recruited by 1 November (R46) to determine the final student number methodology that we will use: R04 multiplied by the ratio, R46 multiplied by the ratio or R06.

Independent learning providers

You can see the methodology we have used in the ‘total student numbers, student number methodology used’ box on your statement.

Depending on the profile of recruitment for the individual provider, we will either use:

a 12-month rolling figure for February 2024 to January 2025 based on R14 (2023 to 2024) and R06 (2024 to 2025) data
the same approach as set out above for FE colleges
the average of approaches 1 and 2

There may be a delay in issuing allocations for institutions where we use R06 data.

Local authorities and some other FE institutions

If using in-year data is not appropriate, we will use a full-year figure based on R14 (2023 to 2024). We compare this figure with the student numbers calculated from R06 (2024 to 2025), year-to-date (as at 1 February) figure to determine the final student number methodology that we will use: R14 or R06.

Maintained special schools

We allocate post-16 high needs place funding directly to local authorities. Local authorities then determine the post-16 place funding to allocate to individual maintained special schools.

Special academies

We use published 2024 to 2025 academic year high needs place numbers, revised by place changes notified to us by local authorities in November 2024.

Special post-16 institutions (SPIs)

We will allocate programme funding (element 1) and high needs funding (element 2) using counts of valid students from 2024 to 2025 ILR R06 data returns. We will use a reference date of 1 February 2025.

Lagged approach

For those institutions normally subject to funding based on lagged student numbers, the lagged approach does not apply where there is a material change in the volume of provision offered by the institution. In those cases, we remove the institution from the lagged approach and we calculate funded student numbers as set out in the funding rates and formula guidance.

Formula elements

These are the methods we will use to determine the other formula elements for institutions with 16 to 19 funding in 2025 to 2026.

Data sources for formula elements/Institution type	Institutions making ILR return	Institutions making census return	Institutions with no historical data
Retention/Size of programme/Programme cost weighting/Disadvantage block 2 instances/High value courses premium and English and maths funding	R14 2023 to 2024	Autumn census 2024 (end-year 2023 to 2024 data)	National average for institution type
Disadvantage block 1 factor/instances and discretionary bursary instances	R14 2023 to 2024	Autumn census 2024 (end-year 2023 to 2024 data)	Local authority average for institution type
Large programmes	2022 to 2023 young people’s matched admin dataset (YPMAD)	2022 to 2023 YPMAD	No impact
Industry placements/Condition of funding	R14 2023 to 2024	Autumn census 2024 (end-year 2023 to 2024 data)	No impact
Advanced maths premium	2024 to 2025 R04 data with a reference date of 1 November 2024	Autumn census 2024 (2024 to 2025 data)	If institution is open in 2024 to 2025, then ILR/census as appropriate. If not open in 2024 to 2025, then no impact
Core maths premium	2024 to 2025 R04 data with a reference date of 1 November 2024	Autumn census 2024 (2024 to 2025 data)	If institution is open in 2024 to 2025, then ILR/census as appropriate. If not open in 2024 to 2025, then no impact

Contact us

If you have questions after reading our guidance, or if there’s anything else you need help with, you can find more support in our customer help centre.

Published allocations

You can find a list of our previously published allocations transparency data on our funding education for 16 to 19 year olds collection page.

16 to 19 funding allocations

Applies to England