The majority of techniques employed for the analysis of functionally graded materials (FGMs) use the so-called uncoupled approach which is based on homogenized material property variations and thus ignores the effect of microstructural gradation. The higher-order theory for functionally graded materials (HOTFGM) is a coupled approach which explicitly takes the effect of microstructural gradation, and thus the local-global interaction of the spatially variable inclusion phase(s), into account. Despite its demonstrated utility, however, the original formulation of HOTFGM is computationally intensive. Herein, an efficient reformulation of HOTFGM is presented based on the local-global conductivity and stiffness matrix formulation. In this approach, surface-averaged quantities are the primary variables which replace volume-averaged quantities employed in the original formulation. The reformulation decreases the size of the global conductivity and stiffness matrices by approximately sixty percent, facilitating modeling of realistic microstructures. The presented results illustrate the efficiency of the reformulation and its advantages in analyzing FGMs.