Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 2 June 2025 to Question 54081 on Schools: Fylde, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of the 2025-26 teachers’ pay award on school budget sustainability in Lancashire schools.

The overall core schools budget is increasing by £3.7 billion in the 2025/26 financial year, which is a 6% overall increase in cash terms. The data which the department holds on the real terms increase in schools funding is at a national level. The latest schools funding statistics release was published on 30 January 2025. It showed school funding for pupils aged 5 to 16 was projected to increase by 1.2% in real terms in the 2025/26 financial year at a national level.

This analysis does not include the additional funding provided to support schools with the cost of National Insurance contributions (NICs) increases in March 2025, nor the extra funding announced alongside the teacher pay award on 22 May. Schools will, on average, be expected to find approximately the first 1 percentage point of pay awards through improved productivity and smarter spending. The government will fund the pay award above this level through new and existing funding increases. The department will be further developing the current suite of initiatives to support schools with their workforce, commercial and asset management.

Through the dedicated schools grant (DSG), Lancashire local authority is attracting on average, £6,348 per pupil (excluding growth and falling rolls funding) in the 2025/26 financial year. This represents an increase of 2.4% per pupil compared to the 2024/25 financial year (excluding growth and falling rolls funding) when it attracted £5,863 per pupil. These figures do not include the additional funding provided to support schools with the cost of NICs and the Schools Budget Support Grant funding alongside the teacher pay award. The actual funding that individual schools in Lancashire receive is determined by the operation of Lancashire’s local formula.

We cannot provide the equivalent figures for Fylde constituency as the DSG is allocated at local authority level.

The figures above are provided on a cash basis. We also publish real-terms statistics on schools funding at the national level. We use the GDP deflator to calculate real-terms funding levels.