Annual funding

Recurrent funding

Funding for 2019-20

For the academic year 2019-20 the overall grant we are distributing is £1,449 million.

Of this we are distributing £1,309 million to providers through our recurrent teaching funding streams.

Recurrent funding allocations are made to providers that are in the 'approved (fee cap)' category of the OfS register.

Our initial allocations of funding for 2019-20 were released on 9 May 2019 and included 304 providers that had registered in that category by 15 April 2019.

We have set aside £14 million to make further allocations to providers which register in the same category after 15 April and before the end of the 2019-20 academic year (31 July 2020).

We will release these funds throughout the year. We will not reduce the allocations announced on 9 May to extend funding to providers that join the OfS register later.

Key documents

These documents describe how we calculated our funding for 2019‑20.

‘Guide to funding 2019-20’
This document provides a general overview of how we calculated our funding.
‘Recurrent and formula capital funding for 2019-20’
This document summarises how we split our budget into different funding streams and the totals allocated to each provider.
‘Funding for 2019-20: OfS board decisions’
This document summarises the board’s decisions on funding methods.

Our funding streams

The majority of our funding for 2019-20 (£1,309 million) is allocated as recurrent teaching grant:

High-cost subject funding (£713 million for 2019-20) is provided to help support the extra costs associated with teaching particular subjects.
Targeted allocations (£536 million total for 2019-20) are provided to support important or vulnerable features of higher education in accordance with key policy initiatives.
National Collaborative Outreach Programme (£60 million for 2019‑20) Further information on our funding streams and how they are allocated can be found in the ‘Guide to funding 2019-20’.

Funding for 2018-19

For the academic year 2018-19, we allocated funding to 315 higher education providers.

In May 2018 we announced these funding allocations, which total £1,538 million.

We have calculated teaching and capital funding using:

Student numbers reported in the 2017 HESES and HEIFES surveys
Methods agreed by our board in March 2018.

Key documents

These documents describe how we have calculated our funding for 2018-19.

‘Guide to funding 2018-19’ – provides a general overview of how we calculate our funding.
‘Recurrent and formula capital funding for 2018-19’ – summarises how we split our budget into different funding streams and the totals allocated to each provider. (We published a revised version of Annex A to this document in October 2018 to show updated allocations for some providers, arising from changes to their student data and for other reasons.)
‘Teaching funding in the period from April 2018 to July 2019’ – summarises the board’s decisions on funding methods.

Our funding streams

The majority of our funding for 2018-19 (£1,290 million) was allocated as recurrent teaching grant.

Our ‘Guide to funding’ provides further detail on these funding streams.

Recurrent grant: high-cost subject funding

This funding totals £681 million for 2018-19 and is provided to help support the extra costs associated with teaching particular subjects.

Some subjects need particular facilities or equipment to teach and so are more expensive than other subjects which are classroom based.

Recurrent grant: targeted allocations

These total £549 million for 2018-19. Our targeted allocations are provided to support important or vulnerable features of higher education, and reflect policy areas highlighted by the government as important.

For example, we have distributed £72 million to providers to support successful outcomes for part-time undergraduates.

A full list of our targeted allocations is in our ‘Guide to funding’.

Other funding streams

National Collaborative Outreach Programme
The recurrent teaching grant total also includes £60 million for the National Collaborative Outreach Programme.
National facilities and regulatory initiatives
For 2018-19, this totals £51 million. This is used to secure change or fund activities that can’t be addressed through our funding to providers
Knowledge exchange funding
For 2018-19, this totals £47 million. This funding comes from our teaching grant budget, but it is administered by Research England according to a method agreed with us.
The funds support the contribution higher education makes to the economy and society.
Capital funding for teaching
For 2018-19, this totals £150 million. Further information on capital funding can be found in our capital funding pages.

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Annual funding

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