Early Years Education

HC Deb 06 May 2004 vol 420 cc1749-50W

Mr. Simmonds

To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what steps have been taken to deliver Early Years education in rural areas; and if he will make a statement. [167876]

	Pupils achieving Level 4+: Mathematics	Pupils achieving Level 4+: English
	Heywood and Middleton	England	Heywood and Middleton	England
	Number	Percentage	Percentage	Number	Percentage	Percentage
2003	936	69	73	927	69	75
2002	1,031	72	73	1,069	75	75
2001	981	69	71	1,056	74	75
2000	975	72	72	991	73	75
1999	993	72	69	997	72	71
1998	790	58	59	882	65	65
1997	787	61	62	780	61	63

Jim Dobbin

To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills how much public funding was spent on higher education in Heywood and Middleton in each of the last seven years. [168505]

Alan Johnson

The only publicly-funded institution providing higher education in Heywood and Middleton is Hopwood Hall College. The amounts of public funding spent in the years for which figures are available are shown in the table. Expenditure was by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and by the Student Loans Company (SLC). The latter relates only to spending on tuition fees, student loans (cash cost) and the dependants grant. Data prior to 1999/2000 are not available. The figures for student support do not include spending on other additional grants, namely, disabled students allowance, care leavers grant and travel grant. These were paid through local education authorities, up to 2003/04, and figures are not held centrally.

£000
Academic Year	HEFCE funding	SLC funding
1999/2000	264	183.9
2000/01	273	232.5
2001/02	342.5	367.3
2002/03	443	405.7
2003/04	508.2	n/a

Margaret Hodge

All authorities have received sufficient funding to enable them to fund free places for all three and four-year-olds whose parents want one, through the under-fives sub-block of their Education Formula Spending Share (EFSS)—the main source of funding for education. For 2004–05, over £2.6 billion of EFSS was distributed through the under-five sub-block. The funding includes 'top ups' which relate to the LA's local circumstances i.e. deprivation and area costs.