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Budget 2024: A good starting point but much more will be needed

The Budget is a good "starting point” but must be backed up by “further ambition and investment” if we are to recover from years of "chronic underfunding" in education.
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Teachers and school leaders have broadly welcomed chancellor Rachel Reeves’ settlement for education, including its £1.3bn real-terms increase in per-pupil funding for 2025/26 and additional £1bn for high-needs SEND.

However, there is also widespread acknowledgement that this Budget on its own will be nowhere near enough to reverse the impact of “14 years of chronic underfunding”.

The Budget covers 2025/26. In spring, the government will report on the results of its spending review and set budgets for at least the next three years. For now, the settlement for the Department for Education includes:

Writing in SecEd this week, Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), says that this is a government “which is clearly trying to fix the problems” and reminds us that “we had Budgets under the previous government where education was scarcely mentioned at all”.

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