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 awarding teachers a 4 per cent pay increase on schools’ ability to (a) afford education supplies and (b) carry out building repairs.

School funding is increasing by £3.7 billion in the 2025/26 financial year, meaning that core school budgets will total £65.3 billion compared to £61.6 billion in 2024/25.

This includes the £2.3 billion announced at the October Budget and £1.4 billion in additional funding being provided to support schools and high needs settings, with the increases to employer National Insurance contributions from April 2025 and the 2025 staff pay awards.

As part of that, the department is providing schools with £615 million in additional funding in the 2025/26 financial year to support them with overall costs, including the costs of the 4% schools teacher pay award and the 3.2% local government support staff pay offer in 2025/26. Schools, like other parts of the public sector, are being asked to do their part and to fund the first 1% of the staff pay awards. The circumstances will be different for individual schools, because they have autonomy over their spending, including staffing and educational supplies.

The government has increased capital investment to improve the condition of school buildings across England to £2.1 billion for the 2025/26 financial year. We have also given a long term commitment to increase annual capital maintenance investment per year through to 2034/35. This is in addition to investment of almost £20 billion in the School Rebuilding Programme through to 2034/35, delivering rebuilding projects at over 500 schools across England within the existing programme, with a further 250 schools to be selected within the next two years.