Grants are available to publicly funded schools, academies and free schools throughout the UK to mitigate the effects of significant mobility and/or deployment of their service communities.

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) is providing the Education Support Fund (ESF) to help mitigate the effects of significant mobility and/or deployment of service communities.

Children may have to change school when a service parent is posted or the school may support a pupil when a parent is absent for long periods of time. This fund is available to support schools in embedding practices that can benefit the service children and their school.

The fund is different from the Armed Forces Community Covenant Grant Scheme which is open to a wider variety of organisations and seeks to forge closer ties between Military and local communities.

It is also different to the Service Pupil Premium, which is provided to schools in England by the Department for Education in respect of children of serving members of the armed forces.

Eligible applicants:

• Maintained Schools
• Academies
• Free School
• 6th form colleges
• Groups of any schools described above (referred to as ‘Cluster bids’ - these are strongly encouraged)
• Local authorities on behalf of the publicly funded schools in their area.

If applying as a cluster an individual school can also submit their own separate bid, provided it is for a different initiative.

Schools must be subject to either significant mobility of Service children or have Service children whose parents are subject to deployments.

The maximum amount of funding an applicant can request is not stipulated.

The deadline for applications is 30 September 2022.

 

How To Apply

The next round of the ESF will open to applications on 9 May 2022. The deadline for applications will be 30 September 2022.

For more information, visit the MOD website.