If you’ve ever opened a Junior ISA for your child and wondered whether you’re paying in enough, you’re asking a reasonable question. But, surprisingly, it’s hard to get an honest answer. Most of what you’ll find online is generic advice about the £9,000 annual allowance and vague encouragement to “save what you can”. Here at The Children’s ISA, we wanted to answer it properly, with real numbers and dig a little deeper into families’ investment habits when it comes to securing a better future for their children. 

HMRC publishes exactly what UK families pay into Junior ISAs each year, and the latest figures, covering the 2023/24 tax year, tell a clear and genuinely reassuring story. We’ve pulled the numbers straight from HMRC’s own Annual Savings Statistics, so everything below is what families across the UK are actually doing, not a “should”, a “recommend” or an industry rule of thumb.

The average Junior ISA contribution in the UK

The headline number is £1,347. That’s the average amount paid into a Junior ISA in the UK in 2023/24, across cash and stocks and shares accounts combined, according to HMRC’s Annual Savings Statistics. Put another way, the typical family used just 15% of the £9,000 a year they’re allowed to put in tax-free.

This figure is worth considering because it isn’t what most Junior ISA guides imply. There’s a common assumption, understandable given how often the £9,000 figure gets quoted, that “doing it properly” means getting somewhere close to the maximum tax-free limit for a child. In practice, it doesn’t. The average family is saving a meaningful amount regularly, not sprinting for the ceiling. If your own contributions look nothing like £9,000 a year, you’re not behind; you are simply investing the same as most other people. 

How many families are actually doing this

1.37 million Junior ISA accounts received a contribution in 2023/24, up from 1.25 million the year before, a rise of nearly 10% in a single year. That’s not a niche habit among a handful of especially organised parents and grandparents; it’s a genuinely mainstream way of saving for a child’s future, and it’s growing quickly.

The £1.8 billion paid in across all those accounts last year was a record high too, up over 20% on 2022/23. Families aren’t just opening accounts and forgetting about them. The amount going in each year is rising faster than the number of accounts is, which suggests existing savers are increasing what they put in, as well as new families joining in.

If we zoom out further, the trend is even clearer. Around 296,000 Junior ISA accounts were subscribed to in 2012/13, the scheme’s first full year. By 2023/24 that had grown to 1.37 million, more than four times as many. Junior ISAs went from a fairly niche product to something well over a million UK families use every single year, and take-up is still climbing, not levelling off.

Cash or stocks and shares: where the money’s going

Here’s a genuinely interesting shift. Back in 2012/13, the year after Junior ISAs launched, cash accounts took nearly three quarters of all the money subscribed (74.8%), with stocks and shares JISAs picking up the rest. By 2023/24, that’s flipped: stocks and shares accounts now account for 63.6% of the money going in, more than double their original share, with cash down to 36.4%. Here at the Children’s ISA, this is no surprise to us. Investments tend to outpace cash, especially when inflation is high. 

It shows up in the averages too. The typical stocks and shares JISA received £1,960 in 2023/24, compared with £872 for the typical cash JISA, more than double. With a Junior ISA locked away until the child turns 18, many families are clearly deciding that a longer time horizon may suit an investment-based account. 

The bigger picture: £12.5 billion and counting

Add it all up, and there’s now £12.5 billion held in Junior ISAs across the UK, £7.5 billion of it in stocks and shares accounts and £5 billion in cash, according to HMRC’s market value figures as at April 2024. Since Junior ISAs launched in November 2011, the total amount held in them has grown more than a hundredfold, from £117 million in that first partial year to £12.5 billion now. What started as a novel idea to replace the Child Trust Fund (CTF) has become a genuinely well-established part of how UK families save for their children, and the numbers are climbing every year. 

What this means for your own Junior ISA

None of this is a target to hit. It’s simply what other families are doing, and we think that context is useful, because a lot of Junior ISA content online implies there’s a “right” amount to be saving, usually somewhere near the full allowance, and that’s just not how most people use them in practice.

What the data does show is that regular, realistic contributions, whatever fits your own budget, put you squarely in line with the vast majority of UK families. Whether that’s £20 a month or £200, you’re part of a genuinely mainstream, fast-growing group of parents and grandparents building something for a child’s future. It’s also worth remembering a Junior ISA doesn’t have to be funded by one person alone; grandparents, other family members and friends can all pay into the same account, which is often how families get closer to the full allowance without any one person carrying the whole cost.

We’ll keep coming back to HMRC’s figures as they’re updated each year, because we’d rather show you what’s genuinely happening than repeat the same generic advice everyone else does. If you’re weighing up cash against stocks and shares, or simply want to see how a Junior ISA with us works in practice, take a look at our Junior ISA account to find out more.

Source: HMRC, Annual Savings Statistics 2025 (published 18 September 2025), Individual Savings Account tables 9.4 and 9.6. Figures cover the 2023/24 tax year (provisional) and Junior ISA market values as at 5 April 2024.