The Office for Students (OfS) counted 102 of 279 providers, or 36.6%, forecasting a deficit for 2025-26 in the Annual Financial Return each one filed itself, in the annual report it published on 14 May 20261. That is up from 84 providers, 30.1%, the cycle before, and the report puts restructuring costs at £218.2m in 2024-25, a rise of 20.7%. The Annual Financial Return is the yearly account of its own finances that every registered provider must send the regulator.
The 45% and 41% this ledger has carried come from the same regulator for the same academic year. Each figure is accurate for the year it names, 45% of English providers in deficit for 2025-26 and 41% in 2026-27. Both come from the OfS update of November 2025, where they appear as the regulator's own modelled scenario for what happens "without mitigating action"2.
8.4 points separate the model from the count. One figure is a modelled downside case, the other a tally of what the sector actually submitted, from one regulator, for one academic year. Neither replaces the other, and this desk's cell will now name the model as a model rather than presenting it as a count.
No 2026-27 deficit count appears anywhere in the May report, so the 41% has nothing in the register to check it against, and saying so beats implying otherwise. A student feels the difference as the gap between a warning and a course that closes. The report itself predates this window by three and a half months and appears here because no outlet reported it.
