Basic Skills
Business, Innovation and Skills
Caroline Dinenage (Gosport, Conservative)
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills what his Department has spent on reducing adult (a) illiteracy and (b) innumeracy in each of the last five years.
Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk, Conservative)
Further education colleges and providers have a single Adult Skills Budget providing them with the flexibility to respond to local learner and employer needs. There are no separate budgets for adult literacy or numeracy provision.
The following table shows the Skills Funding Agency's estimate of Government funding made available for adult literacy and numeracy provision (including provision delivered through apprenticeship frameworks, functional skills, GCSE and Adult Basic Skills provision) for learners aged 19+ in the 2007/08 to 2011/12 academic years. The figures are calculated using information submitted by providers via the Individualised Learning Record (ILR). Data for 2011/12 are based on provisional year end data so are subject to change.
Overall participation on English and maths courses has increased each year since 2009/10 (data for 2011/12 are provisional and subject to change).
| Estimated expenditure on adult literacy and numeracy provision, 2007/08 to 2011/12 (provisional) | |||||
| £ million | |||||
| 2007/08 | 2008/09 | 2009/10 | 2010/11 | 2011/12 | |
| Final | Final | Final | Final | Provisional | |
| Literacy | 226 | 239 | 227 | 176 | 190 |
| Numeracy | 152 | 192 | 183 | 165 | 180 |
| Note: Figures are rounded to the nearest £1 million. Source: Skills Funding Agency estimates based on Individualised Learner Record | |||||