An investigation is underway into how Department for Education officials made an error in school funding allocations for next year that would have inflated the core schools budget by £370 million.
Permanent secretary Susan Acland-Hood has today apologised, and education secretary Gillian Keegan has ordered a review of DfE quality assurance processes after identifying an error forecasting pupil numbers.
Schools Week understands the error was identified in September. It was not announced until around 5pm on Thursday.
Left unaddressed, the error would mean the cost of the core schools budget would be 0.62 per cent greater than allocated in 2024-25. The budget is due to be £59.6 billion next year, so an error of that size would equal around £370 million.
