§ Mr. ShawTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment (1) what arrangements he will put in place to ensure that local authorities' adult education services are funded by the local authorities in 2001 at or above the level of the relevant standard spending assessment sub-category; [100602]
(2) how much each local education authority in England spent on adult education in the financial year 1998–99; [100612]
(3) what is the level of adult education funding that will be transferred from the budgets of each English local education authority to the Learning and Skills Council in the financial year 2001–02. [100613]
§ Mr. WicksIn "Learning to Succeed" we set out our intention to give the proposed Learning and Skills Council (LSC) responsibility for adult and community learning from April 2001. We made clear that provided local authorities meet the requirements to prepare and implement effective lifelong learning development plans they can expect to receive from the LSC a substantial part of its resource for adult and community learning.
Following consideration of the comments received on our proposals we will be announcing shortly more detail of our plans for establishing the LSC, including arrangements for funding adult and community education through that body rather than local authorities.
Information on local education authority expenditure, including that on adult education, will be available in the new year.