Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much has been paid to students of private Higher Education providers who were subsequently determined to be ineligible in each of the last five full financial years.

All higher education providers are autonomous and privately run. This includes Higher Education Funding Council for England funded higher education institutions and alternative providers, which can be designated for student support purposes by the department. At the same time, some privately run institutions may be subject to obligations imposed on public authorities (e.g. the Freedom of Information Act 2000). As a result of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017, the Office for Students will regulate all registered English higher education providers through its regulatory framework, which is currently being consulted on.

The department, with the Student Loans Company, regularly reviews its controls designed to ensure that payments to ineligible students across the sector are minimised. In particular, ineligible payments made in relation to alternative providers were considered by the National Audit Office (NAO) in its recent report ‘Follow-up on alternative higher education providers’. In their report, the NAO noted that the level of ineligible payments has fallen as a proportion of all payments to students attending alternative providers, from 4% in 2012/13 to 0.5% in 2015/16, in line with the rate of ineligible payments across the higher education sector (0.8%).

Data on ineligible payments made in relation to alternative providers is presented by academic year in the attached document.