The Department for Education says high-needs cost pressures have worsened since last year to become a “major issue”, in its
Last year the DfE rated cost pressures from high needs - support for young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) - as a “very likely critical” risk, but it has now upped this rating for 2024-25.
The department also ranks the teacher workforce as a major issue, though this is unchanged from the previous year.
It ranks the education estate as a very likely critical risk, and cyber security as a likely critical risk.
Here are five other key points from the DfE’s annual report:
1. DfE exceeds spending limit
As a result of financial pressures during the year, the DfE said it requested approval from the chief secretary to the Treasury to relax ringfenced funding rules for a number policy areas where there was an underspend within its resource departmental expenditure limit (RDEL).
“Following the relaxation of these policy ringfences, the department exceeded its RDEL excluding depreciation [His Majesty’s Treasury] limit by £590,000,” the report states.
“The department is taking steps to avoid exceeding such HMT limits in the future.”
2. Progress made towards targets
The annual report analyses how the DfE has progressed towards its key performance indicators.
It estimates that it is making progress towards many of them.
One of the targets is for 75 per cent of five-year-olds in England to reach a good level of development. The DfE says this figure sat at 67.7 per cent for 2024.
On its delivery of the Regional Improvement for Standards and Excellence (RISE) teams, the DfE says schools selected in April to receive targeted intervention will be assessed during the 2025 summer term, and matched with supporting organisations.
It also states that primary school attendance was improving steadily, while secondary schools were seeing improvements but at a slower rate.
On school buildings, the DfE says that, at the time of publication, “there are no open schools or college buildings where we know of an imminent risk of harm”.
3. Childcare expansion adds to LA risks
The DfE says that grants paid to local authorities “continue to be a key assurance risk”. The two main considerations for this year are the “historical delays” in local authorities publishing their audited annual reports and accounts and the expansion of the early years childcare programme, the report says.
“The significant expansion of the early years childcare programme, with the introduction of new age groups of young children, new childcare entitlement criteria for working parents and significantly increased funding, has led us to consider this to be an area of potential risk,” the report says.
The DfE adds that it has “significantly increased” its assurance work in this area, focusing on local authorities’ control arrangements over early years provision and carrying out additional testing through its funding audit work.
4. Big increase in payment errors
The DfE recorded £72.3 million in detected payment errors during 2023-24, up from £39.1 million in 2022-23.
It says last year’s figure was particularly high due to two outlying cases - one of which involved the resolution of “a long-running investigation”.
It has only published figures for the first two quarters of 2024-25. The value of detected errors so far in 2024-25 is £13.8 million, down from £36.4 million in the comparable period in 2023-24.
5. Board to address climate risks
The DfE says it has established a new Adaptation and Nature Recovery Programme Board that will develop and oversee the strategy for addressing the climate risk to the education estate.
“The board will manage where climate may impact on the delivery of education services or affect the health and safety of pupils and staff; and respond to the requirement to protect the environment and promote nature recovery,” the DfE says.
“This board has responsibility to develop an adaptation programme for the education estate, report on agreed key performance indicators and escalate risks and issues to senior governance.”
You can now get the UK’s most-trusted source of education news in a mobile app. Get Tes magazine on and on
