§ Mr. Beithasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science how widespread is the practice of local education authorities funding courses in non-advanced further education with pool money designed to fund advanced further education courses; how much pool money is being thus spent; and whether he will make a statement.
§ Mr. WaldegraveThe Department does not have the information requested. The apportionment of expenditure between advanced and non-advanced work in any further education establishment which provides both is not a precise exercise, but one carried out in accordance with a variety of conventions drawn up for a variety of purposes. The advanced further education pool is only one of several sources of income which a local education authority can use to finance the total expenditure of its further education institutions, and it is not possible to relate precisely particular items of institutional expenditure to particular sources of revenue.
A central principle of block grant is that it is not hypothecated to individual services, and this applies as much to the pool component as to any other component. It is for local authorities to determine their own priorities in spending the resources available to them.