Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what criteria her Department uses to decide how much 16 to 19 Bursary funding is distributed to each a) Local Education Authority, b) Multi-Academy Trust and c) school within a Local Education Authority and Multi-Academy Trust.

The department allocates the bulk of 16 to 19 bursary funding in advance for institutions to make discretionary bursary awards to students.

For mainstream schools and academies, allocations are made to individual institutions. Each local authority-maintained school, or academy within a multi-academy trust, will get its own allocation from the department. It is up to these organisations how to allocate this funding.

Calculations for an institution’s discretionary bursary funding are based on data around the financial needs and costs faced by its students. The methodology for calculating discretionary bursary allocations has two elements:

• Element One: financial disadvantage is based on students’ home postcodes, matched against the Index of Multiple Deprivation.

• Element Two: student costs is intended to provide a general indicator of the main costs faced by students. It includes funding for travel costs by using the rurality of the student’s home postcode and the delivery location of their learning, together with funding for industry placement costs for students on T Levels.