16 to 19 funding: information for 2024 to 2025
Source: gov.uk (2025-03-05)

Details for 16 to 19 funded institutions on how funding will work in academic year 2024 to 2025.

The Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) closed on 31 March 2025. All activity has moved to the Department for Education (DfE). You should continue to follow this guidance.

Purpose

This guide shows the changes we are making for 16 to 19 funding for the academic year 2024 to 2025.

March 2025 update

The Autumn Budget delivered on 30 October 2024 (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/autumn-budget-2024) provided an additional £300 million funding for further education for financial year 2025 to 2026 to ensure young people are developing the skills this country needs.

Post-16 budget grant

We have made approximately £50 million of this funding available to further education colleges and sixth-form colleges for the period April to July 2025. This one-off grant will enable colleges to respond to current priorities and challenges, including workforce recruitment and retention.

This £50 million funding for colleges is in addition to the grant funding for schools and academies with 16 to 19 provision, which will continue over this period.

This was previously called the post-16 schools budget grant (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/post-16-schools-budget-grant). From April 2025, the grant includes further education colleges and sixth-form colleges and is called the post-16 budget grant.

We aim to publish further information on the post-16 budget grant in May 2025, to include the:
- methodology for calculating the grant
- institution-level funding allocations
- conditions of grant
This grant will stop at the end of academic year 2024 to 2025. For academic year 2025 to 2026 (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/16-to-19-funding-information-for-2025-to-2026), we have brought the grant into the national funding rate which will be the same for all institutions with a 16 to 19 allocation.

Changes for 2024 to 2025

On 27 October 2021, the chancellor announced a 3-year spending review (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/autumn-budget-and-spending-review-2021-documents) outcome for 16 to 19 education, making available an extra £1.6 billion in 2024 to 2025 financial year compared with 2021 to 2022. This is in addition to the £291 million for 16 to 19 education in 2021 to 2022 (https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/spending-review-2020-speech) and the £400 million that the government provided in 2020 to 2021 (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/chancellor-announces-400-million-investment-for-16-19-year-olds-education).

We have used funding from the final year of the 3-year settlement to fund changes for the 2024 to 2025 academic year.

On 4 October 2023, the Prime Minister announced proposals to introduce the Advanced British Standard (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-qualifications-to-deliver-world-class-education-for-all) for 16 to 19 year olds, a new baccalaureate-style qualification that takes the best of A levels and T Levels and brings them together into a single qualification. We have used funding announced alongside this to prepare for the Advanced British Standard to strengthen funding for English and maths. Specifically, this has been used to:
- increase the advanced maths premium payments
- introduce a new core maths premium, and
- extend the current level 3 maths and English payment to also support other students who are retaking English and maths
National funding rate for 2024 to 2025

We have increased the national funding rate for students aged 16 and 17 and students aged 18 and over with high needs in band 5 to £4,843, and we will continue to fund an extra 40 hours per student. We have built this into the increases in each of the funding bands, which have also increased proportionately.

National funding rate for students funded via the 16 to 19 funding formula

Table 1

National funding rates for T Levels

Table 2

Table 2 shows the funding rate per student for the 2 year T Level programme. This includes the 10% uplift to T Levels we have retained for an extra year for the academic year 2024 to 2025. The funding rate per student for 1 year of the T Level programme is half the amount shown in table 2, at the rate in the relevant academic year.

Specific formula elements

Disadvantage funding

For academic year 2024 to 2025 funding allocations, we will adjust the rate for disadvantage block 2 (which reflects the additional cost of teaching and supporting students who have low prior attainment) in line with the increase to the national funding rate. We will also adjust the care leavers rate.

We will increase the disadvantage block 1 rate to:
- £570 for students who are in care or who have recently left care
We will increase the disadvantage block 2 rate to:
- £570 for bands 4 and 5 students
- £347 for bands 2 and 3 students
- £772 for T Level students
High value courses premium

We will continue to fund high value courses premium (HVCP) (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/16-to-19-funding-high-value-courses-premium) in academic year 2024 to 2025 at £600. This is to further encourage delivery and enrolments in courses with higher wage returns. We have published the list (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/qualifications-attracting-high-value-courses-premium) of qualifying A level subjects and sector subject areas that we use to calculate HVCP for 2024 to 2025 allocations.

Maths funding

Advanced maths premium

We have removed core maths qualifications from the advanced maths premium (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/16-to-19-funding-advanced-maths-premium). We will continue to pay the advanced maths premium for other qualifications in scope in academic year 2024 to 2025 at an increased rate of £900.

We have revised the updated baseline we used to calculate the premium to use advanced maths enrolments recorded between academic year 2019 to 2020 and academic year 2020 to 2021 to remove core maths qualifications.

In April 2023, we contacted institutions affected by this change and confirmed we will provide temporary funding equivalent to 100% of the funding difference to institutions that experienced a decrease of £20,000 or more in advanced maths premium funding in academic year 2023 to 2024 compared with 2022 to 2023. In 2024 to 2025, we will again provide one year of temporary funding but at 50% of the funding difference to institutions that would see a decrease in their advanced maths premium funding by £20,000 or more in academic year 2024 to 2025 compared with 2022 to 2023, using the revised baseline.

Core maths premium

We have introduced a new funding element for core maths in 2024 to 2025. We will pay the core maths premium (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/16-to-19-funding-core-maths-premium) at a rate of £900.

English and maths funding

On 4 October 2023, the Prime Minister announced proposals to introduce the Advanced British Standard (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-qualifications-to-deliver-world-class-education-for-all) for 16 to 19 year olds, a new baccalaureate-style qualification that takes the best of A levels and T Levels and brings them together into a single qualification.

We will extend the current level 3 maths and English payment to also support those students studying other 16 to 19 study programmes or T Levels who are retaking English and maths because they have not gained a GCSE grade 9 to 4 or level 2 in these subjects.

This additional funding is intended to support students’ participation in their study programme or T Level by ensuring institutions have the resources to provide extra hours of education or other extra support where needed to deliver English and/or maths alongside other qualifications.

This will raise the floor of attainment ahead of the introduction of the Advanced British Standard and will particularly benefit students studying at further education colleges helping to close the attainment gap by 19.

The rates for the English and maths funding (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/16-to-19-funding-english-and-maths-funding) will be:
- £375 per student per subject in band 4 and above
- £229 per student per subject in bands 3 and 2
- £375 per full-time equivalent per subject in band 1 where students are on programmes of 150 hours or more
All students subject to the condition of funding will attract the payment.

Maths and English condition of funding

We’ve updated our maths and English condition of funding guidance (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/16-to-19-funding-maths-and-english-condition-of-funding) to explain the minimum teaching hours for English and maths for academic year 2024 to 2025. We have explained how we will implement a phased removal of the tolerance starting in 2025 to 2026.

Data error thresholds

It remains the responsibility of all institutions to ensure that data returns through the school census or the individualised learner record are accurate.

We amended the business case thresholds (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/16-to-19-education-funding-allocations#business-cases-for-major-data-errors) for data error cases between 2021 to 2022 and 2023 to 2024 to reflect the increased pressures on budgets from the cost of living and other exceptional circumstances.

For the 2024 to 2025 academic year, we will revert to the pre-pandemic thresholds of 5% or £100k (whichever is lower) when considering data errors.

For cases affecting T Level allocations, we will consider cases where data errors had an impact on 5 or more T Level students.

Teachers’ pension scheme employer contribution grant

We will pay the teachers’ pension scheme employer contribution grant (TPSECG) (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teachers-pension-employer-contribution-grant-2023-to-2024-allocations) for sixth forms and 16 to 19 schools funded via the 16 to 19 funding formula. As in previous years, we will pay the grant separately to core allocations in the financial year 2024 to 2025.

We will also pay the TPSECG for further education providers (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teachers-pension-scheme-employer-contribution-grant-further-education-providers) for the full academic year 2024 to 2025. We will include this grant in 16 to 19 allocations, which we aim to issue in March 2024.