Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of ringfencing funding for small and specialist Higher Education Institutions.

Small and specialist higher education (HE) institutions provide a highly valuable role in nurturing talent and contributing to the UK’s academic, cultural and economic landscape.

The Office for Students (OfS) provides targeted funding to twenty small and specialist providers that they assessed as world leading. This is delivered through the Strategic Priorities Grant (SPG), which is funding that the government provides on an annual basis to support teaching and students in HE, including expensive-to-deliver subjects, such as science and engineering, and for students at risk of discontinuing their studies.

For this 2024/25 academic year, funding from the SPG for these small and specialist providers was maintained at £58 million. Funding for the 2025/26 academic year will be announced by the OfS, following government guidance, later this year.