OfS funding cuts for nursing, computing, history, and the creative arts

In the face of persistent rumours of a £100m cut to the strategic priorities grant, an allocation to OfS of £1,252m – down £50.9m from the final calculation for the current year (which I had as £1,311, but as we will see vagary is something of a theme this time round) – could be seen as a small victory for sector lobbying.

It shouldn’t be. These are big transformative cuts – which will have an impact on delivering healthcare, computing, and creative courses; and on the support that disadvantaged students can access to support their learning. We’ve been expecting this letter (just under 2,400 words on 7 pages) for months, and while it was nice to finally see it there are more questions than answers.

If you look at initial allocations, 2025-26 funding was initially set as £1,347m – the envelope was flexed to include allocations for defence skills (£50m recurrent over the next three financial years) and the way the OfS component of HEIF was separated out as a separate fund. Of course, as the largest part of these allocations are only calculable based on student number data for the year in question we need to remember that most of these numbers are indicative only. It would, however, have been nice to see a little more indication.

The government’s priorities are best expressed via the elements of OfS spending that are to be maintained (albeit in cash, not real, terms). I’m largely working this out based on last years’ allocation – there is usually a table in the annex that spells this stuff out, but Bridget Phillipson (just her signature this time, I guess Jacqui Smith was busy dialing into another sector conference from DfE’s high security bunker) didn’t see fit to include it.

What we know

• The allocation for world leading specialist providers remains static at £56.8m – though the funds available for transitional funding must not exceed £400k (down from £700k last year).
• The total level of funding for price groups A and B is also steady in cash terms, as are the supplements for nursing, midwifery, and allied health (just over £32m); and the very-high cost STEM allocation (just under £25m)
• Uni Connect annual funding remains at £20m.
• And student premium funds to support mental health (£13.3m) and students with disabilities (£43m) will be preserved.
• HEIF contributions remain at £48m.

Everything else is cut. And I do mean everything.

• The £15.8m for clinical consultant’s pay, £850k for senior academic general practitioners, and £4.8m for NHS pension contributions are all gone.
• As are all high-cost subject funding allocations with respect to price groups C1.1 (nursing, computing, history – based on HESES data I put that at around £47m) and C1.2 (creative arts, this was £12m last year) are gone.
• And the funding available for the student outcomes premium (full time, full time supplement, and part time) will also see cuts – we’re not told directly what the new value of these funds will be, but these currently sit at about £196m across the three strands.

Of course, as with last year, student premium funds don’t go to franchised providers unless they are either registered with OfS, smaller than 300 students, or in the list of exempt providers (state schools, FE institutions, NHS service providers, Police and Crime Commissioners, local authorities, government departments, armed forces, Mayoral Combined Authorities) all as per the White Paper.

There’s also a note on capital funding – we get £88m for use between 26-27 and 29-30, with the expectation that the majority of this will go via a funding competition (where bits should align with local needs and be environmentally sustainable). That’s a lot of bidding work for a potentially small project-based allocation: many providers sat the competition out last time and the opportunity to do so and take a tiny portion of a tiny formula allocation returns this time round.

And of course all of this is ahead of a wider consultation on the use of the strategic priorities grant, due later this year.

For such a seismic shift in funding priorities, it is very difficult to get a handle on just how much each part of the allocation has changed. I’ve indicated the values above where these seem reasonably certain – but for many of the pricier line items (student premiums, C1.1 and C1.2) the final cost will depend on the number of students eligible. The franchised provision eligibility criteria will have an impact, but so will the general ebb and flow of recruitment and retention.

We can’t replicate these SPG calculations by price group based on current data because we don’t know the moderating factors – calculated based on previous recruitment and unique to each provider. And the up-to-date data that underpins the student premium calculations just isn’t available.

I feel moderately confident that the funds for NHS staff working as academics within universities is being allocated via a different route now – even as a massive HE nerd I don’t know what this is, so if you run finance for a medical school expect an urgent call from somebody senior in your institution very soon.

All of which confusion constitutes a bit of a failing. The whole point of publishing these grant letter things is to help universities plan for the following year – knowing, even at a broad level, how much funding you might expect to receive and how this amount differs from what you got previously is often the difference between a course or department being viable or not. The idea that DfE would be happy to put at risk something as uncomplicatedly valuable as nursing by publishing a late and unclear grant letter is not a comfortable one.