Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to ensure that funding allocated to universities for teaching for 2024-25 enables institutions to provide high quality education that meets national skills needs.

The Strategic Priorities Grant (SPG) is funding which is supplied by the government on an annual basis to support teaching and students in higher education (HE). This funding also includes subjects that are expensive to deliver, such as science and engineering, students who are at risk of discontinuing their studies, and world-leading specialist providers.

​The department is investing hundreds of millions of pounds in additional funding over the three-year period from 2022/23 to 2024/25. This is to support high-quality teaching and facilities including funding for science and engineering, subjects that support the NHS, and degree apprenticeships. This includes the largest increase in government funding for the HE sector to support students and teaching in over a decade.

In the 2023/24 financial year, over half of the total £1,454 million SPG recurrent funding budget is being directed towards the provision of high-cost subjects that support the NHS and wider healthcare policy (for example, medicine and dentistry), science, engineering, and technology subjects, and specific labour market needs.

There is also £276 million of Student Premium and mental health funding available this academic year, 2023/24, to support students who need additional help, including disadvantaged students. This funding complements the help universities are providing through their own bursary, scholarship and hardship support schemes. The department is now making a further £10 million of one-off support available to support student mental health and hardship funding. It will continue to liaise with the Office for Students on the impacts of cost-of-living pressures.

Over the three-year period from 2022/23 to 2024/25, the department is also providing £450 million in capital funding to invest in teaching and learning facilities which meet the government’s strategic priorities.

The next SPG allocations will be announced ahead of the 2024/25 academic year.