Guidance

Post-16 budget grant methodology: April 2025 to August 2025

Updated 7 May 2025

Applies to England

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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/post-16-schools-budget-grant/post-16-budget-grant-methodology-april-2025-to-august-2025

1. Introduction

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

From April 2025, the grant includes further education colleges and sixth-form colleges. This one-off grant will enable providers to respond to current priorities and challenges, including workforce recruitment and retention.

This grant will stop at the end of academic year 2024 to 2025. For academic year 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.

2. Eligibility for the grant

2.1 Mainstream institutions

The post-16 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 school and academy sixth forms
  • 16 to 19 academies
  • further education (FE) colleges
  • sixth-form colleges
  • designated institutions (including the new designated institutions that form part of higher education provider group structures)
  • local authorities

3. Payments

We will pay the post-16 budget grant from April 2025 to the end of the 2024 to 2025 academic year which is August 2025 for academies and July 2025 for all other provider types.

We expect to pay the grant: 

  • June 2025 for maintained schools, local authorities, FE colleges and sixth form colleges
  • July 2025 for academies

There will be one payment to cover the period.

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 all other provider types the allocated amount directly.

4. Allocation calculation

We will calculate the grant by applying a percentage uplift of 3.55% to all eligible institutions’ total programme funding. The amount that we have used can be found on the most recent 16 to 19 revenue funding statement for academic year 2024 to 2025.

For academies

  • we will use five twelfths of the total programme funding representing the period April to August which the grant will cover

For all other provider types

  • we will use four twelfths representing the period April to July which the grant will cover

We have published grant allocations at institutional level.

5. Academies funded on estimates

For the small number of academies we fund 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. Contact us

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

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