The government has cut next year’s budget for the Turing Scheme by almost a third.
The Department for Education today confirmed it has made £78 million available for the international placement scheme during the 2025-26 academic year, a 29 per cent reduction from £110 million last year.
DfE has also limited the maximum funding pot available per FE provider application to £205,000 and has almost halved daily living costs for students going abroad.
The trimming follows fears that Turing would be cut altogether. Reports emerged in March that DfE offered up the Turing Scheme to the Treasury as part of its cost-cutting proposal.
The 2025-26 academic year is a one-year extension for Turing, with the prior EU-funded Erasmus+ programme possibly making a comeback in the future.
Skills minister Jacqui Smith said last month that the government has begun negotiating to “work towards” rejoining Erasmus+.
Allocation changes
In the meantime, DfE has changed how it allocates this year’s Turing funding.
Guidance published today shows that FE providers will be limited to apply for a maximum of £205,000.
Consortiums can apply for up to £600,000 but no more than £205,000 will be given to each provider.
DfE said it will also “rank” providers’ applications by their assessment score, the relative proportion of placements that will go to students and apprentices from disadvantaged backgrounds.
“We assess that this will be the fairest way of allocating funding and will make it easier for providers to deliver all the placements they apply for,” the guidance said.
It also warned that Turing funding should not go towards things that are already covered by local authority funding, student finance or devolved governments.
Next year’s scheme will also have reduced living cost for groups going aboard by almost half.
Students and staff travelling to higher cost destinations will be funded for £55 per day for the first two weeks, and £40 per day after 14 days. Last year’s funding awarded £109 and £76 per day respectively.
The second group, going to lower cost countries, will only be funded a £50 daily allowance for the first two weeks, down from £87, and £35 per day after 14 days, a cut from £61.
The administration and implementation costs have stayed the same – £315 per student for the first 100 students, and £180 per student after that. The same goes for language support – each student will receive £135 for placements over 19 days to help learn the language.
In March, FE Week analysis found that FE providers had sent the most deprived students on placements than any other education provider since the scheme began in 2021.
Overall, further education providers have placed 22,483 disadvantaged learners, representing 60 per cent of all 37,342 participants.
The number of students coming from FE has increased in the four years of the scheme, garnering more than double the funding allocation to FE institutions – from £15.9 million on 2021-22 to £33.6 million last year.
Last year, 74 per cent of all FE applications in England were granted, 1 percentage point lower than 2023-24.
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