Schools: Finance
(asked on 7th May 2025) - View Source
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of the Dedicated Schools Grant funding formula.
The dedicated schools grant (DSG) is paid in support of local authorities’ schools budgets. It allocates funding through four separate blocks covering mainstream schools, high needs, early years and central school services. Each block is calculated using its own separate funding formula.
The total funding allocated through the DSG was £68.8 billion in the 2025/26 financial year, up from £62.5 billion in 2024/25. The table below sets out how this is split across the four blocks.
Dedicated Schools Grant | |||||
Financial Year | Mainstream Schools Block (£ bn) | Central School Services Block (£ bn) | High Needs Block (£ bn) | Early Years Block (£ bn) | Total (£ bn) |
2024/25 | 45.3 | 0.4 | 10.4 | 6.4 | 62.5 |
2025/26 | 48.7 | 0.4 | 11.2 | 8.5 | 68.8 |
Please note that the 2025/26 and 2024/25 financial year figures are not directly comparable since some funding provided through separate grants in 2024/25 was rolled into the DSG in 2025/26.
Detailed information on the 2025/26 DSG funding allocations can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dedicated-schools-grant-dsg-2025-to-2026.
Funding levels for 2026/27 and beyond are subject to the ongoing spending review.