Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 5 December 2018 to Question 199283 on Disabled Students Allowances, if he will publish the information for part-time students.

Provisional data for 2017/18 provided by the Student Loans Company (SLC) shows that 1,600 part-time undergraduate English domiciled students have so far been paid Disabled Students’ Allowances (DSA) for equipment, a 23% increase on the number paid at the same point in the academic year 2016/17 (1,300).

Data provided by the SLC shows that, in the academic year 2016/17, 1,500 part-time undergraduate English domiciled students were paid DSA for equipment. This compares to 1,700 in the academic years 2015/16 and 2014/15.

For full-time students only, DSA provisional uptake and expenditure data for 2017/18 show an increase in the number of students benefitting from the equipment allowance to 21,800, compared to 18,700 at the same point in the previous year. The overall expenditure has also risen, to £21.5 million in 2017/18 compared to £14.4 million at the same point the previous year: an increase of almost 50%. This means that the average expenditure per student over those two years has risen to £986 in 2017/18 from £770 at the same point in 2016/17.