External sources of funding for schools and education

Every year, billions of pounds in external funds are available to secondary schools in the UK to enhance and extend educational opportunities. In this article I will provide a whistle-stop tour of these funding sources, highlighting those that are proving especially helpful to schools during this period of challenging financial times.

My aim in this overview is to:

The good news for school fundraising coordinators is that there is a great diversity of external funding sources available to UK secondary schools, with no less than seven distinctive categories of funds and literally thousands of individual funders within these.

Indeed, entire books have been written on this complex topic. Therefore in this article it is only possible to provide a snapshot of the huge number of potential funding sources for your school. In selecting the funders to list, I have focused on those that have the best track record in funding work in secondary schools.