Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many and what proportion of people who took an English for Speakers of Other Languages class claimed Universal Credit in the last 12 months; and what the cost to the public purse was of the provision of those classes in the same period.

The information requested is not held centrally and is therefore not readily available.

The department does hold data on the number of people who took an English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) qualification, but this only includes learners funded through the adult skills fund (ASF), therefore excluding learners in devolved areas and those who studied ESOL courses funded through tailored learning. In 2023/24 145,730 people studied an ESOL qualification funded through the ASF.