Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much of her Department's budget allocated to 16 to 19-year old education was reallocated to other budgets in the financial years (a) 2014-15, (b) 2015-16 and (c) 2016-17.

Budgets for 16 to 19-year-old education are set on the basis of the established 16 to 19 funding rates and formula, using estimates of student numbers. In 2014-15 and 2015-16 student numbers and associated costs were lower than these estimates, which resulted in lower spending than the forecast, by £135m and £132m respectively, representing 2.2% of the budget. This was available for reallocation. Because this resulted from student numbers which were slightly lower than forecast, it did not affect funding per student. Final expenditure is not yet available for 2016-17 and will be published in Education and Skills Funding Agency accounts in due course.