Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of funding pay increases from school budgets on levels of (a) teachers and (b) teaching assistants.

At the Autumn Budget 2024, the government announced an additional £2.3 billion for mainstream schools and young people with high needs for the 2025/26 financial year, compared to 2024/25. This means that overall core school funding will total almost £63.9 billion in 2025/26.

Of this £2.3 billion increase, almost £1 billion is being allocated to high needs budgets. The outstanding £1.3 billion will cover the remaining mainstream costs of the 2024 teachers’ pay award in the 2025/26 financial year, as well as an increase to the mainstream schools national funding formula, and any increases to other elements of core funding.

On 10 December 2024, the department published our written evidence to the School Teachers' Review Body (STRB) to inform their recommendations for teachers’ pay in the 2025/26 academic year, which proposed a pay award of 2.8% for teachers. We expect that schools will also take into consideration the cost of support staff pay in the 2025/26 financial year. Schools will be expected to fund the 2025 teacher pay award from the additional investment provided at the Budget, alongside their existing funds. Most schools will need to supplement the new funding they receive with efficiencies in their budgets. The balance between new funding and efficiencies will vary at individual school level depending on their circumstances. It will continue to be for individual schools to decide how they spend their budgets, including on the balance between spending on teachers, support staff, including teaching assistants, and non-pay expenditure.

To support schools towards identifying efficiencies, the department is developing a suite of new productivity initiatives in partnership with the sector. This will complement the free support already available to schools, including new support to make budgets go further across technology, procurement, banking services and energy contracts. For example, we have already seen from our pilot that the 400 schools who have participated in the department’s ‘Energy for Schools’ offer will save 36% on average compared to their previous energy contracts.