Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the total amount of money provided through the Student Loans Company to meet the cost of tuition fees for the Postgraduate Certificate in Education was in each of the last five years.

Statistics covering payments to domestic and EU students under the English higher education funding system are published annually by the Student Loans Company (SLC).

Data collected by the SLC shows that in the academic year 2015/16, around £174 million in tuition fee loans was paid to providers of higher education on behalf of students on full-time postgraduate initial teacher training courses. As at August 2017, around £165 million in tuition fee loans was paid in the academic year 2016/17. Payments for 2016/17 are provisional; typically around 1% of payments are made after the end of the traditional academic year.

Due to the introduction of a new course management system at SLC, information prior to the academic year 2015/16 is not available on a comparable basis.