Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what was the rationale for the decision to withdraw funding from state schools for the International Baccalaureate.

All institutions will still be able offer the International Baccalaureate (IB) and receive normal funding per student supported by this government’s very significant investment into 16 to 19 education.

The base rate of funding per student has increased to £5,105 in the 2025/26 academic year, up over 5% on last year. However, to make this funding work hard, we have announced that from 2026/27 we will focus large programme uplift (LPU) funding, which is on top of the base funding, on those large programmes which include mathematics, further mathematics and other high value A levels. Other programmes, such as the IB, will no longer attract this uplift.

The department is giving transitional protection funding in the 2026/27 academic year so, for institutions that will lose a significant amount of LPU, the reduction will be spread over two years.