Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate she has made of the number of schools whose grant offered to cover the rise in employers National Insurance contributions is not enough meet the actual cost incurred.

The government has agreed that public sector employers will receive support in recognition of the increase in their National Insurance contributions (NICs) from April 2025. The department is providing schools and high needs settings with over £930 million in the 2025/26 financial year to support them with their increased NICs costs. This support is additional to the £2.3 billion increase to core school funding announced at the Autumn Budget 2024. This means that the core schools budget, which includes the core revenue funding for schools and high needs, will total over £64.8 billion in the 2025/26 financial year. The amount of public sector support is based on HM Treasury analysis of the proportion of employer NICs receipts paid by public sector organisations, and allocated between departments based on headcount and wage/salary data.

The NICs grant will allocate funding to schools according to their pupil numbers, and the numbers of pupils with additional needs, along with a lump sum component for every school regardless of pupil numbers. The department’s funding system is not designed so that every school receives funding that fully matches their precise spending as that, including the NICs costs, varies between institutions because of the decisions that each school takes on its staffing.

The department has distributed this funding in proportion to the needs of the different sectors and phases of education. The department will continue to monitor cost pressures, as it usually does.