Core schools budget grant (CSBG) 2024 to 2025
Allocations and guidance for schools and local authorities for the core schools budget grant (CSBG) for September 2024 to March 2025.
Applies to England
Documents
Details
This guidance is for:
- local authorities
- school leaders
- school teachers
- governing bodies and their representatives
It relates to local authority-maintained schools, academies (including free schools), hospital schools, non-maintained special schools (NMSS), independent special schools, and local authorities employing centrally employed teachers (CETs) in England.
The core schools budget grant (CSBG) is providing almost £1.1 billion to support schools with their overall costs in the 2024 to 2025 financial year, in particular following confirmation of the 2024 teacher pay award.
This matches what we calculated is needed to fully fund, at a national level, the teacher pay award and the support staff pay award in financial year 2024 to 2025, after accounting for the available headroom in schools’ existing budgets. We recognise the picture will be different for individual schools.
We are also providing £97 million in respect of schools delivering post-16 and early years provision. We are distributing additional funding for early years settings through the early years budget grant (EYBG). We are allocating the post-16 funding though the post-16 schools budget grant.
2025 to 2026 core schools funding (including the core schools budget grant (CSBG))
At the 30 October budget, the government announced an additional £2.3 billion for mainstream schools and young people with high needs for financial year 2025 to 2026, compared to financial year 2024 to 2025. This means that overall core school funding will total almost £63.9 billion in financial year 2025 to 2026.
This funding will be distributed to schools through their usual funding streams. Of this £2.3 billon increase, almost £1 billion is being allocated to high needs budgets. The remainder will cover the remaining mainstream costs of the 2024 teachers’ pay award in financial year 2025 to 2026, on top of the existing funding schools are receiving in financial year 2024 to 2025 via the CSBG (which will continue in financial year 2025 to 2026 but be rolled into the national funding formula (NFF)); an increase to the mainstream schools NFF; and any increases to other elements of core funding.
In financial year 2025 to 2026, schools will therefore receive additional funding over and above the original allocation via the CSBG, to cover the remaining five-twelfths of the teachers’ pay award. For maintained schools, this will be received via their core funding allocations from April 2025. For an academy, this will be via a continuation of the CSBG in the period April to August 2025, but with the rates reflecting five-twelfths of the full-year costs. Academies can see these updated rates in the ‘Core schools budget grant (CSBG) methodology: September 2024 to March 2025’ document on this page. From September 2025, this funding will be rolled into academies’ general annual grant (GAG) allocations.
Methodology
This document sets out the methodology for the CSBG. This includes information on how we will allocate funding for the 7-month period September 2024 to March 2025: for mainstream schools (for the 5 to 16 year-old age range); for special and alternative provision (AP) schools, including how local authorities will be required to pass that funding on to those schools; and for local authorities with CETs.
For the support staff award, the calculation is based on the 12-month period from April 2024 until March 2025, given the pay award runs on a financial year cycle.
For the teacher pay award, the calculation is based on the 7-month period from September 2024 until March 2025, given the pay award runs on an academic year cycle. This is after already accounting for the first 5 months of teacher pay costs in the financial year (April 2024 to August 2024), following the 2023 teacher pay award.
We are aware that the full impact of the teacher pay award is felt across financial years 2024 to 2025 and 2025 to 2026. The CSBG for 2024 to 2025 covers the financial year 2024 to 2025 (first seven-twelfths) portion of the award. The section above confirms how the full twelve-twelfths are covered from financial year 2025 to 2026.
In financial year 2025 to 2026, we will combine into a single grant to local authorities, the CSBG, teachers’ pay additional grant (TPAG) and teachers’ pension employer contribution grant (TPECG 2024) allocations for special and AP schools and hospital education.
Conditions of grant
This sets out the terms and conditions that local authorities, academies, and NMSS must follow.
Allocations
We have published school and local authority level allocations showing the total funding allocated for September 2024 to March 2025 for mainstream schools, special schools, AP schools, hospital schools and for centrally employed teachers.
For an academy, this will be via a continuation of the CSBG in the period April to August 2025, but with the rates reflecting five-twelfths of the full-year costs. Academies can see these updated rates in the ‘Core schools budget grant (CSBG) methodology: September 2024 to March 2025’ document on this page.
Academies will receive an additional payment of the CSBG (to cover April to August 2025) in May 2025.
Updates to this page
Published 29 July 2024Last updated
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We have now added the core schools budget grant (CSBG) allocations for special schools.
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We have updated the methodology section 6.2 to include the funding rates for the spring 2025 payment to new mainstream schools and also updated section 6.1 to confirm rates for mainstream schools that are still adding year groups in the 2024 to 2025 academic year. We have also added the CSGB 2024 to 2025 spreadsheets for new and growing schools as at February 2025.
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We have added to the allocations section, confirmation of payment to academies in May 2025 to cover April to August 2025
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We have updated the following: - landing page - we have added a new section '2025 to 2026 core schools funding (including the CSBG) - landing page - we have amended the 'Methodology (CSBG), and 'Allocations (CSBG) sections to include further information for academies on the CSBG rates for the period April to August 2025 - 'Core schools budget grant (CSBG) methodology: September 2024 to March 2025' document - we have updated sections 3.1 and 4.2 to provide further information for academies on the CSBG rates for the period April to August 2025
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We have amended the methodology section of the landing page to include more detail about funding for financial year 2025 to 2026. This detail has also been added to sections 3.2 of the methodology document and 1.3 of the conditions of grant.
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We have added the core schools budget grant (CSBG) 2024 to 2025 allocations spreadsheets for mainstream and special schools, and for local authorities with centrally employed teachers. We have also added the conditions of grant.
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First published.