Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate his Department has made of the amount of money spent from the public purse on education in (a) 1997, (b) 2007, (c) 2010 and (d) 2017.

The Government publishes expenditure figures for education in the Public Expenditure Statistical Analysis (PESA), and is available in table 4.2 at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/630570/60243_PESA_Accessible.pdf. The figures include expenditure on education by Central Government, Local Government, Public Corporations and the Devolved Administrations, and include both current and capital expenditure.

From 2011-12 onwards the grant-equivalent element of student loans is no longer part of the Total Expenditure of Services (TES) framework, and has therefore been removed from the education expenditure figures. For this reason, figures are not directly comparable between 2010-11 and 2011-12. A full explanation of this decision can be found in Annex E of PESA 2017.