Stephen Timms – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Stephen Timms on 2014-04-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will visit further education colleges to discuss the effect of his proposed 17.5 per cent reduction from September for funding for 18 year olds in full-time education.

Elizabeth Truss

I have received a large number of invitations to discuss this topic and sadly cannot accept nearly as many as I would like to.

Nevertheless, I have listened to the views of the hon. and Rt hon. Members, as well as those of colleges and other providers of 16-to-19 education. I am pleased that we have been able to afford to mitigate the impact of the funding reduction on 18-year-olds in the academic year 2014/15. We will cap any losses in relation to this at 2% of the funding that an institution receives for the education of 16-to-19 year olds.

However, the overriding need to tackle the budget deficit remains, and so the full funding reduction for 18-year-olds will still be necessary in 2015/16. We have carried out and published an impact assessment, which is available online:https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/funding-reduction-for-18-year-olds-impact-assessment.

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