Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many and what proportion of parents with 16-19 year olds in full-time further education at school and college were in receipt of child benefit in (a) England and (b) the UK in each of the last three years.

This question was answered on 2nd February 2023
This information is only available at disproportionate cost as the available Child Benefit data does not distinguish between young persons who are 16 and not in further education and those who are. Information on the educational setting (school or college) attended by young people aged 16 or over is not held.

Child Benefit statistics are published using August data from each year, detailing the number of children receiving Child Benefit payments by age and region. Figures from 2019-2021 for children aged 16-19 are summarised in the table below:

Number of children in (i) the UK and (ii) England receiving Child Benefit payments as of August of each year

	2019		2020		2021
Age	UK	England	UK	England	UK	England
161	643,915	542,490	656,640	554,150	660,420	557,185
17	500,560	423,980	517,110	439,520	528,280	450,065
18	418,565	361,175	422,505	366,560	440,745	383,845
19	95,830	80,305	90,610	75,490	84,015	70,080

Note 1: not all 16 year olds will remain in further education from the following September

The Child Benefit annual statistics are published on GOV.UK at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/child-benefit-geographical-statistics