The government is due to announce extra funding for the Department for Education at this week’s Spending Review, but experts warn this is unlikely to translate into a significant boost for school budgets.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves will deliver her multi-year spending plan tomorrow, which will lay out departmental budgets up to 2029.

According to reports, schools are set to receive an extra £4.5 billion over the next four years. 

Funding experts suggest an increase of this size might actually only represent a freezing of the core schools budget in real terms, and include pre-existing commitments such as the expansion of free school meals.

Here are the main issues for schools to look out for on Wednesday:

Where might an extra £4.5bn be spent?

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) warned last month that the Spending Review would involve tough choices for the government over which areas of the education budget to prioritise.

The IFS has remained cautious despite reports over the weekend - unconfirmed by the DfE at the time of writing - that schools can expect extra money in this week’s spending review.

Luke Sibieta, IFS research fellow, said the extra money set to be announced could be used to provide a real-terms freeze in the core schools budget and provide some extra money for the expansion of free school meals announced last week.

In a post on social media, he added: “The day-to-day schools budget is about £65 billion in 2025-26. Keeping that constant in real terms costs just under £4 billion in cash terms by 2028-29.

“That would increase spending per pupil by about 3 per cent compared with today, since pupil numbers are expected to fall.”

Pupil numbers are set to fall by 3 per cent between 2025 and 2029.

The IFS previously warned that any opportunities for savings from falling pupil rolls were likely to be wiped out by the spiralling costs of special educational needs and disabilities provision.

And this week Mr Sibieta also questioned whether the extra £4.5 billion would include the additional £615 million announced to help towards the costs for schools of the 4 per cent pay rise for teachers next year.

Tes asked the DfE this question but, again, it had not responded at the time of writing this article.

Free school meals

Last week the DfE announced a major expansion of free school meals that will mean all children in households in receipt of universal credit become eligible from September 2026.

The DfE currently spends around £1.4 billion a year on FSM in England. In the longer term, the IFS expects the expansion to cost around £1 billion - a 70 per cent increase in FSM spending.

Mr Sibieta said that an additional extra cost of £400 million to £600 million as a result of FSM expansion by 2028-29 “seems plausible” and that this could be where a part of the extra funding for schools is directed.

SEND reforms

A report in Sunday’s Observer said that education secretary Bridget Phillipson had persuaded the Treasury that money was also needed to “implement radical reforms to the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND)”.

The DfE has not committed to setting out its plans to reform the SEND system by the time of the Spending Review. Responding to demands for urgency from the Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) recently, the department said it aims to produce a fully costed plan by April next year.

Tes revealed last month that the DfE is considering whether to keep education, health and care plans.

The DfE also told the PAC that it aimed to set out how it will deal with council SEND deficits this summer. A statutory override is currently keeping the deficits off councils’ books, but this is due to expire in March 2026.

At the Budget last year, the DfE announced that £1 billion of the extra £2.3 billion for schools in 2025-26 was for high needs.

The DfE has placed an emphasis on ensuring that more pupils with SEND are placed in mainstream schools.

An additional 6,500 teachers

The DfE could set out more details on the government’s commitment to recruit an additional 6,500 teachers at the Spending Review.

Last week Tes revealed that it is not including primary school teachers in this target.

The DfE hailed an increase of 2,346 more teachers in secondary and special schools in the latest workforce data for England as a sign of it making progress towards its additional 6,500 teachers target. However, the number of primary school teachers declined by 2,900.

Appearing in front of the PAC last month, DfE permanent secretary Susan Acland-Hood said work was underway on the target and the detail was being held for the Spending Review.

Ms Acland-Hood said no specific year has been set as a baseline for the target.

The DfE budgeted around £700 million towards initiatives to address teacher shortages in 2024-25, a National Audit Office report said. Around £390 million of this was for financial incentives such as bursaries and targeted retention payments.

It also spends on non-financial incentives such as workload initiatives. The department announced last month that it is extending its Flexible Working Ambassadors Programme for another year, backed by £500,000.

The Spending Review is likely to shed some light on where the DfE will focus its strategy.

Capital funding

The DfE’s School Rebuilding Programme - originally announced in 2020 - aims to rebuild or refurbish 500 schools in a decade.

The government announced at the autumn Budget that £1.4 billion of the DfE’s £6.7 billion total capital funding for 2025-26 would go towards delivering the School Rebuilding Programme.

The Spending Review should set the DfE’s capital departmental spending limit (DEL) up to 2029, which will give some indication of how much might be spent on projects like the School Rebuilding Programme and school maintenance.

The National Audit Office has estimated that the cost of fixing crumbling school buildings is £13.8 billion.

The DfE set £2.1 billion of its capital funding aside for school maintenance in 2025-26, which was £300 million more than the year before. It announced last week that £470 million would go towards capital projects through the Condition Improvement Fund (CIF).

The number of schools and projects funded through CIF has been falling every year as the cost of projects rises, despite more funding being in the pot in 2025-26 than the year before.

Further Ofsted reform

Another area of promised reform that would appear to require more funding is the role of Ofsted.

Ofsted is in the process of developing a new framework for school inspections including report cards, which are set to be introduced in the second half of the autumn term this year.

The introduction of Ofsted report cards and the scrapping of overall single-word judgements was a key manifesto pledge for Labour ahead of the last election. But there are two other changes Labour has promised that are yet to be taken forward.

Firstly, its manifesto said it would introduce an annual safeguarding check for schools, which would decouple this judgement from school inspections. Secondly, it also pledged to introduce Ofsted inspections of multi-academy trusts.

Less funding for Oak

Last year Tes revealed that Ms Phillipson had promised to reduce the funding that Oak National Academy received in the multi-year Spending Review.

In a letter to the British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA), the Publishers Association and the Society of Authors, Ms Phillipson said she could commit to Oak’s funding “being lower” for 2026-29 than in the preceding years.

It was part of an offer made to the three organisations in order to settle their legal dispute with the government over the creation of Oak as an arm’s length curriculum resources body.