Colleges’ share of £50m pay rise cash revealed

Over 200 colleges will each receive a share of £50 million next month towards staff pay rises.

The one-off post-16 grant formed part of chancellor Rachel Reeves’ autumn budget funding package for colleges last October, worth £300 million in total. 

Ministers announced in January around £50 million would be made available to further education and sixth form colleges to cover the final four months of the 2024-25 academic year. 

The remaining £250 million will go towards a 3.78 per cent increase to the 16-19 funding rate in 2025-26. 

Details released today show grants worth £51.5 million have been awarded to 210 further education and sixth form colleges.

The Department for Education has again chosen to use colleges’ 16-19 funding as a baseline to calculate the grants, putting colleges with larger apprenticeships or 19+ student cohorts at a disadvantage. 

Guidance states each grant was calculated by adding a 3.55 per cent uplift to each college’s 16-19 total programme funding for 2024-25. 

Grants ranged from just over £1 million for NCG, England’s largest college group, to a modest £459.56 for Richmond and Hillcroft Adult and Community College. See the full list here.

DfE “expects” to pay the grants in June. 

Ministers offered the cash days after FE Week revealed the Sixth Form Colleges Association agreed to drop its judicial review claim against the DfE over last summer’s college teacher pay snub.

The promise of in-year funding led to the SFCA upping its pay recommendation from 2 per cent to 3.5 per cent for September 2024 to March 2025, increasing to 5.5 per cent from April 2025 to July 2025, covering the period of the grant. 

This comes as college teaching union University and College Union, itself embroiled in industrial unrest among its own staff, prepares for its national congress later this month with multiple college branches calling for a national teacher strike over pay. 

Negotiations for next year’s pay award are ongoing between the joint forum of FE staff unions and the Association of Colleges. Demands include a 10 pay rise, binding pay recommendations and reduced class sizes and teaching hours.

Click here to see how much each college will receive.