Schools are to receive another 12 months of support under a new energy bills discount scheme from April, but help will be reduced after the chancellor called the current scheme “unsustainably expensive”.
Ministers have said that under the new scheme, non-domestic customers - which include businesses, charities and schools, among others - would get up to £6.97 taken off their energy bills for every megawatt-hour (MWh) of gas they use.
Electricity bills will also be discounted by up to £19.61 per MWh.
The government is currently running an energy bill relief scheme that helps some schools with soaring gas and electricity costs, but this support is due to end in April.
Tes revealed earlier this year that schools were planning to restrict heating in order to manage soaring bills this winter.
And in December, schools in England were also given a share of £500 million to spend on energy upgrades to make their buildings more efficient.
Last year, the Department for Education said schools could use the money on improvements such as better heating controls, insulation to reduce heat loss from pipes or switching to energy-efficient lighting.
The new scheme announced this week will deliver billions of pounds of support to companies over 12 months from the start of April.
The current scheme is set to cost the government about £18 billion over just six months, compared with £5.5 billion over a whole year for the new plan.
The new scheme will run from 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024.
It will only be paid if the wholesale amounts that schools pay are above a certain threshold - £302 per MWh for electricity and £107 per MWh for gas.
Schools will not need to apply for their discount and suppliers will automatically apply reductions to the bills of all eligible non-domestic customers.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said: “Wholesale energy prices are falling and have now gone back to levels just before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
“But to provide reassurance against the risk of prices rising again we are launching the new energy bills discount scheme, giving businesses the certainty they need to plan ahead.
“Even though prices are falling, I am concerned this is not being passed on to businesses, so I’ve written to Ofgem asking for an update on whether further action is needed to make sure the market is working for businesses.”
