Third of Covid education spending 'to come from existing budgets'

Ministers have committed to spend £4.3bn on education in response to the pandemic but research claims that 30 per cent is likely to be from existing sources of funding.

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The Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) research analyses additional government spending commitments to help nurseries, schools and training providers support young people and children to recover from the pandemic.

This includes £1.7bn on catch up funding for schools  as well as £280m on early years and family support. A further £370m has been promised to the higher education sector.

However, the IFS says that the Department for Education is due to receive only £3bn from the Treasury, leaving a funding gap of £1.3bn, which is set to be covered through existing funding.

Money for apprenticeships is among areas cited by the IFS as existing funding that could be used to plug the spending gap.

“The government is widely expected to publish a long-run plan for education recovery in the coming weeks,” said IFS research fellow Luke Sibieta, who carried out the research.

“This seems likely to place extra responsibilities and expectations on schools and other providers. It will therefore be crucial to understand how much extra funding is attached, as well as the underlying state of school and college finances.

“As we move back to normal, it will be harder to fund new funding commitments from existing budgets.”

The IFS research has been funded by the Nuffield Foundation.

“The government has directed considerable amounts of contingency funding towards tackling the short-term effects of Covid on education, particularly for children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds,” said Nuffield Foundation director of education Josh Hillman.

“However, as this research shows, tackling both the short- and longer-term effects of the pandemic on all stages of education will require considerable additional funding.”

He added that the government’s education recovery plan “must be ambitious, with generous funding commitments for both immediate and post-pandemic education spending”.

Last month a survey of school leaders found that a third of headteachers are set to use pupil premium finding meant for disadvantaged children to plug gaps in their school budget.