Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much of her Department's budget for 16-to-19 education was not spent on education for that age group in each of the (a) 2014-15, (b) 2015-16 and (c) 2016-17 financial years.

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.

Final expenditure is not yet available for 2016-17 and will be published in the Education and Skills Funding Agency accounts shortly.