Summary of Autumn spending review

Autumn Spending Review Summary

Budgets & Funding

Core schools budget protected in real terms:
- The pupil premium will also be protected at current rates.
- Funding for universal infant free school meals will also be maintained.
Plans to introduce the first ever national funding formula, so that funding is transparently and fairly linked to children’s needs.
- £390 million of additional funding given to the least fairly funded areas in 2015-16.
- The government will launch a consultation on the national funding formula in 2016 and implement it from 2017-18.

Building and School places

Investing £23 billion in school buildings:
- opening 500 new free schools.
- creating 600,000 school places.
- rebuilding and refurbishing over 500 schools and addressing essential maintenance needs.

Academies

The goal is to help every secondary school to become an Academy, making local authorities running schools a thing of the past.
Sixth Form Colleges will be allowed to become Academies and will be able to join existing MATs.

Teacher Recruitment

£1.3 billion investment to 2019-20 to attract new teachers into the profession, particularly into STEM and Ebacc subjects.

Maintain the current national base rate of funding for 16-19 year old students for the whole Parliament.
Adult skills funding for FE colleges protected in cash terms.
Provide tuition fee loans for those studying higher skills in FE, extending loans to all Postgraduates.

Replace student maintenance grants with larger maintenance loans (saving £2bn+)
Part-time students will be able to receive maintenance loans.
Removal of the student numbers cap enables English universities to plan to recruit 130,000 more domestic and EU students.
The government will lift the age cap on new loans to postgraduates from 2016-17.
For all STEM subjects, tuition loans will be extended to students wishing to do a second degree from 2017-18.