Wednesday 22-01-2025 - 09:54

Each year we ask you to tell us about your SU funding in our BIG SU Survey. The information you provide will be used in two important ways. Firstly, to calculate your membership contribution which is based on a proportion of your funding. Providing this information is vital to ensure this is accurate. Secondly, we use the information to provide data and analysis back to you about trends in funding to help you negotiate with your institution. This includes publishing the full dataset to allow you to analyse and benchmark. See last year's report and data here.

This year, over 80 SUs have already taken part - will you join them to build our most valuable data set yet? The more information we have, the more useful the data becomes, especailly for our members renegotiating block grants. We know that last year's data was utilised to successfully negotiate higher block grants by some members. 

So far,  the funding picture is that of uncertainty. With institution budgets being cut, many members have fed back that they’re uncertain what their funding settlement will be and many are expecting reductions. Members are reporting that they are seeking to build in inflationary increases as well as funds to cover increases in NI contributions. But with negotiations ongoing this remains uncertain. Falling student numbers in some institutions will likely lead to reductions for some members.

There are positive stories. We are hearing from members who have secured increases through working with their institution. One member reported that they were able to use block grant per student as a negotiation tool. There are members who are optimistic about increases. Where there are success stories we are particularly keen to share good practice in the survey report.

To get a truely accurate picture of SU funding, we need to hear from you. Don't delay - the survey must close on Friday 31 Janaury.

Fill in the HE SU Funding Survey 

Fill in the Small and FE SU Survey