§ Mr. Hilary BennTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if he will estimate the additional annual cost of support for students attending higher education institutions in England if the support arrangements applicable in 1979, including grants uprated by inflation, were to be applied to the number of students in the 1998–99 academic year. [101950]
§ Mr. Wicks[holding answer 13 December 1999]: The student support system for English and Welsh students has changed significantly over the past 20 years and the levels of grant received by higher education students in 1979 are not known precisely. However, assuming that approximately 800,000 eligible English and Welsh students in 1998–99 received the main rates of maintenance grant for the academic year 1978–79 uplifted for inflation over 20 years, we estimate that they would receive slightly less on average in real terms than from the current loans and grant fee package.
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Expenditure on administration by LEAs in England for financial year 1997–98 LEA number/name Expenditure on central management administration and service strategy and regulation costs (£000) Total education expenditure (£000) Administration as percentage of total education expenditure 201 London, City of 640 3,045 21.02 856 Leicester City 16,577 144,189 11.50 813 North Lincolnshire 5,227 68,560 7.62 204 Hackney 8,037 109,663 7.33 320 Waltham Forest 7,579 104,170 7.28 826 Milton Keynes 5,128 71,491 7.17 202 Camden 6,018 85,137 7.07 203 Greenwich 8,318 119,500 6.96 355 Salford 6,808 100,302 6.79 213 Westminster, City of 5,143 79,172 6.5 319 Sutton 3,825 59,135 6.47 211 Tower Hamlets 8,867 138,041 6.42 305 Bromley 4,638 72,825 6.37 921 Isle of Wight 3,233 53,117 6.09 312 Hillingdon 3,878 64,706 5.99 307 Ealing 6,576 111,613 5.89 308 Enfield 6,959 121,535 5.73 922 Kent 27,805 490,388 5.67 303 Bexley 4,780 84,328 5.67 210 Southwark 6,505 115,502 5.63 825 Buckinghamshire 10,175 183,122 5.56 205 Hammersmith and Fulham 3,631 66,525 5.46 315 Merton 3,745 68,753 5.45 206 Islington 5,222 96,680 5.40 803 South Gloucestershire 5,222 97,604 5.35 837 Bournemouth 2,252 42,824 5.26 390 Gateshead 4,343 85,753 5.06 801 Bristol, City of 7,427 150,630 4.93 340 Knowsley 3,518 72,887 4.83 846 Brighton and Hove 4,044 84,308 4.80 836 Poole 1,736 36,198 4.80 393 South Tyneside 3,208 66,931 4.79 If these 800,000 eligible students had been offered a grant for maintenance and free tuition instead of the current package of a repayable loan for maintenance and private contributions towards the cost of tuition, the additional costs to the Department might have been about £660 million; and we estimate that such a system would cost about £1.6 billion more than full implementation of the new arrangements for fees and income-contingent loans applying for students starting in the current (1999–2000) academic year.
Our student support policies share the costs of higher education more equitably between students who benefit from it and the taxpayer. That has enabled us to halt the decline in investment in higher education and helped provide for a 22 per cent. increase in cash funding by 2001–02.