Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what budget was set for capital expenditure, including improvements, in the further education and sixth form college sector in the financial years 2021–22, 2022–23, and 2023–24; and what proportion of the budget was spent in each of those years.

Ensuring schools and colleges have the resources and buildings they need is a key part of this government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity and give every young person the best start in life.

As announced at the Autumn Budget 2024, the government is providing £6.7 billion of capital funding in 2025/26 for education in England, a real terms increase of 19% from 2024/25. This includes £1.4 billion for the continuing school rebuilding programme, which also includes sixth form colleges and 16-19 academies. The settlement also invests over £2 billion to improve the condition of school and sixth form college buildings, and £950 million for skills capital. Skills capital includes £300 million of new funding to support further education (FE) colleges to maintain, improve and ensure suitability of their estate.

The department provides capital funding to FE colleges and sixth form colleges through a wide range of programmes. The department does not publish the budgets and spend of capital programmes by provider type, however, we do publish provider allocations and awards on GOV.UK and report departmental spending through the annual reports and accounts each year.

The total departmental capital budgets and expenditure for the 2021/22, 2022/23 and 2023/24 financial years are provided in the department’s annual reports and set out in the table below.