Recurrent funding

Introduction to OfS funding

The Office for Students distributes government higher education funding to more than 330 providers in England. Providers must register with the OfS to receive this funding.  

Our grants do not meet the entire teaching costs of a course. Providers receive most of this cost through student tuition fees.

Instead, our funding supports:

• areas where teaching costs are particularly high (such as medicine)
• particular policy areas and government priorities (such as promoting equal opportunities).

We allocate most of our funds by academic year (August to July), though some funding – such as capital funding – is allocated by financial year (April to March).

What we base our calculations on

The government sent us a guidance letter in March.

This set out our teaching funding budget, along with the policy areas we should prioritise. We then determine the budgets for different elements of grant and our approach to their distribution.

Most of our funding is distributed by formula, usually based on the numbers and types of students reported by providers.

Research and knowledge exchange funding

We do not provide any annual funding to support research. This is the responsibility of Research England.

Research England is also responsible for distributing knowledge exchange funding to providers, though part of this funding comes from our teaching budget.

Previous annual funding

Prior to 2018-19, funding was provided by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). For further information on how this funding was allocated, you can consult the annual allocations pages on the HEFCE website.