Grants and funding for solar panels for schools

Most guides to solar panels for schools grants are out of date. The position in England in October 2026 is that there is no open grant or loan an individual school can apply to for solar panels on their own. What exists is a government programme that selects its schools, a condition fund that solar can sometimes ride on, and finance that needs no grant at all. Here is each one, with what it actually pays for and where the evidence comes from.

What is open, and what has closed (October 2026)

Why there is no Salix loan to apply for

For years, school solar advice — this site’s included, until October 2026 — treated an interest-free “Salix Decarbonisation Loan” as the default route for English state schools. Salix’s own England page now lists grant programmes only: PSDS projects still being delivered, the closed Low Carbon Skills Fund and housing schemes. The zero-interest public-sector loans Salix runs today are in Scotland, and Wales has a fixed-rate programme. Our page on Salix funding for schools sets out exactly what is open in each nation.

The Condition Improvement Fund: what solar can and cannot ride on

CIF is the only national bidding route still open to English schools, and only to some of them: stand-alone academies, academies and voluntary aided schools in trusts or groups with fewer than five schools or fewer than 3,000 pupils, and sixth-form colleges. Larger trusts and local authorities receive School Condition Allocation instead. CIF’s priorities are compliance and health and safety, critical replacement of coal and oil-fired boilers where there is a risk of closure, then weather-tightness and heating. Its guidance warns that energy-efficiency works which do not address high-need condition issues are unlikely to succeed, and lists solar only as evidence for the environmental-sustainability part of the score. So the bid has to be the roof or the boiler, with solar designed in — we look at how in whether a CIF bid can pay for school solar.

No capital at all? A solar PPA

Where a school or trust would rather not spend capital, a power purchase agreement lets a funder pay for and own the system while the school buys the electricity it generates at an agreed rate. It is the genuine zero-upfront route, but it is not free: the saving is the gap between the PPA price and the grid price. From 15 July 2026 any PPA on the school estate has to use the DfE’s PPA and land-lease templates, which had not been published by early October 2026, and new approvals are paused until they are; an academy also needs Secretary of State consent for the lease. Our sister resource explains how a solar PPA for schools and academy trusts is structured and where it does and doesn’t beat buying outright.

Smart Export Guarantee — getting paid for the summer holiday

A term-time school over-generates in July and August when it is closed. The Smart Export Guarantee pays for that exported electricity at a rate each licensed supplier sets — Ofgem requires only that it is above zero. For solar up to 50 kW, suppliers ask for MCS or equivalent certification of the installation and the installer; from 50 kW to 5 MW, only the installation needs certifying, to the supplier’s requirements. It won’t carry a business case on its own, but it turns “wasted holiday generation” into a modest income line.

How the routes stack, and the pitfalls

You generally cannot fund the same measure twice, but you can sequence the work: a CIF bid for a failing roof, with the solar on top paid from capital or a PPA, for example. The pitfalls are now different from the ones most guides list:

• bidding a solar-only project into CIF, which its guidance says is unlikely to succeed;
• waiting for PSDS to reopen, when the government has decided to commit no further investment beyond awarded projects;
• signing a PPA that does not use the DfE template, which will not be approved;
• forgetting that capital projects above the Academy Trust Handbook thresholds need trust-level governance sign-off.

Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and independent schools

Scotland: PSDS and CIF do not apply. Salix runs the zero-interest Scottish Public Sector Energy Efficiency Loan Scheme and the Scotland Recycling Fund for the Scottish Government, and the Recycling Fund lists schools, through their local authority or governing body, among eligible applicants. Wales: the Wales Funding Programme lends to public bodies, including councils, at a fixed rate set at the government borrowing rate (2.45% when checked in October 2026); its interest-free Invest to Save strand is only for bodies without borrowing powers. Northern Ireland: the GB schemes and the GB Smart Export Guarantee do not apply; see the Northern Ireland position. Independent schools sit outside CIF and fund from reserves, bonds or a PPA — the VAT-on-fees change from January 2025 has sharpened their interest in the energy saving.