This guide explains the June 16 to 19 funding updates for academic year 2025 to 2026.

June 2025 update

We have increased rates and programme cost weightings to reflect the £190 million additional investment. You can see the changes in the following sections:

• national funding rates
• T Level rates
• disadvantage funding
• programme cost weightings
• English and maths funding

We aim to revise 16 to 19 funding allocation statements in June 2025 to include the latest rates. We will upload revised allocation statements to Document exchange and confirm this in a DfE update article.

National funding rate for students funded via the 16 to 19 funding formula

We have increased the national funding rate for students aged 16 and 17 and students aged 18 and over with high needs in band 5 to £5,105 and have increased other funding bands proportionately.

Table 1: national funding rate for students funded via the 16 to 19 funding formula

National funding rates for T Levels

Table 2 shows the funding rate per student for the 2 year T Level programme. This includes a 5% uplift to T Levels for academic year 2025 to 2026. We have also updated the rates in our 16 to 19 funding rates and formula and T Level funding guidance for academic year 2025 to 2026.

The funding rate per student for 1 year of the T Level programme is half the amount shown in table 2, at the rate in the relevant academic year.

Table 2: national funding rate per student for T Levels

T Level under-delivery tolerance

We will no longer apply an under-delivery tolerance for T Levels from academic year 2025 to 2026. As the T Level programme matures, we expect institutions to be more able to judge their expected T Level recruitment. The removal of the tolerance follows steady reductions in the under-delivery tolerance since 2022 to 2023. This means that from academic year 2025 to 2026, all under-delivery is subject to recovery as part of the T Level reconciliation process.

Specific formula elements

Disadvantage funding

For academic year 2025 to 2026 funding allocations, we have increased the disadvantage block 1 rate to £609 for students who are in care or who have recently left care. 

We have also increased the disadvantage block 2 rates, which reflect the additional cost of teaching and supporting students who have low prior attainment at:

• £609 for bands 4 and 5 students
• £371 for bands 2 and 3 students
• £825 for T Level students

Programme cost weightings

We have increased the programme cost weightings for higher cost courses to boost capacity in priority sector subjects such as construction, manufacturing and digital which are vital to economic growth.

High value courses premium

We will continue to fund high value courses premium (HVCP) in academic year 2025 to 2026 at £600. This is to further encourage delivery and enrolments in courses with higher wage returns. We have published the list of qualifying A level subjects and sector subject areas that we use to calculate HVCP for 2025 to 2026 allocations.

Maths funding

Advanced maths premium

We removed core maths qualifications from the advanced maths premium in academic year 2024 to 2025.

We will continue to pay the advanced maths premium for other qualifications in scope in academic year 2025 to 2026 at £900.

In academic year 2024 to 2025, we revised the updated baseline we used to calculate the premium to use advanced maths enrolments recorded between academic year 2019 to 2020 and academic year 2020 to 2021 to remove core maths qualifications.

Core maths premium

We will continue to fund the core maths premium in academic year 2025 to 2026 at a rate of £900 to encourage the provision of core maths qualifications and expand maths education for students up to the age of 18.

English and maths funding

We have increased the rate for the English and maths payment for students studying 16 to 19 study programmes or T Levels who are retaking English and maths because they have not gained a GCSE grade 9 to 4 or level 2 in these subjects.

This additional funding is intended to support students’ participation in their study programme or T Level by ensuring institutions have the resources to provide extra hours of education or other extra support where needed to deliver English and/or maths alongside other qualifications.

The rates for the English and maths funding will be:

• £418 per student per subject in band 4 and above
• £255 per student per subject in bands 3 and 2
• £418 per full-time equivalent per subject in band 1 where students are on programmes of 150 hours or more

All students subject to the maths and English condition of funding will attract the payment.

Maths and English condition of funding

We’ve updated our maths and English condition of funding guidance to explain the minimum teaching hours for English and maths for academic year 2025 to 2026. We’ve explained how we are implementing a reduction of the tolerance from 5% to 2.5% of institutions’ 16 to 19 cohort in academic year 2025 to 2026. This will impact funding allocations in academic year 2027 to 2028.

Sector Reaction

James Kewin, Deputy Chief Executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, said:

“We warmly welcome today’s funding announcement. When added to existing plans, the 16 to 19 funding rate will be around 5.5% higher next year than it is this year and there are increases to other important elements of the formula such as disadvantage funding. We are pleased that the principle established following our recent legal action that colleges will be treated in the same way as schools when it comes to supporting the implementation of pay awards has been upheld. The increases confirmed today will benefit 16 to 19 year olds in all education settings. This is a good settlement given the fiscal climate and when compared to other parts of the education sector and wider public services.”