Education in the 2025 Spending Review: impossible choices?

The new government has high ambitions to improve education and reduce inequalities. However, like most governments in recent years, it faces a very challenging set of public finances, maybe even more challenging than the situation faced by past governments. The government also has minimal room to manoeuvre against its fiscal rules and has promised no further tax rises. 

In the 2024 Autumn Budget, the government chose to top-up departmental spending plans for 2025–26, but pencilled in relatively tight spending plans for 2026–27 and 2027–28. Once you account for likely spending commitments on the NHS, defence and the large expansion to early years entitlements, other areas would very likely face the need to make spending cuts. On current plans, most areas of education seem likely to be asked to find savings in the 2025 Spending Review. 

At the same time, the cost of special educational needs provision is spiralling up by the billions, spending on skills and further education is low by historical standards, and the government faces a delicate balancing act between asking indebted students to pay more for their studies and universities warning of insolvency. 

In this year’s IFS annual report on education spending in England, we analyse the choices and pressures on education spending facing the government in the 2025 Spending Review. This is in addition to our core analysis examining how education spending has evolved across different phases of education. 

At the event, IFS researchers will begin by setting out the main conclusions of this year’s annual report. A panel of expert speakers with direct experience of previous spending reviews will provide their views on the pressures on education spending and how the government is likely to manage the very difficult fiscal choices in the 2025 Spending Review. The panel will include:

• Anne Longfield CBE – Executive Chair and Founder of the Centre for Young Lives and former Children’s Commissioner for England
• Jonathan Slater – former Permanent Secretary at the Department for Education
• Professor Tim Leunig – Director at Public First, former Special Advisor at HM Treasury and the Department for Education

After the presentations, there will be plenty of time for questions. To register to receive a reminder when the event is about to start, please click here.