Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent discussions he has had with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on guaranteeing the income of the (a) Adult Education Budget, (b) apprenticeship and (c) other study programmes during the covid-19 outbreak.

There is urgent work under way in the department, the Education and Skills Funding Agency and with the Greater London Authority (GLA) and Mayoral Combined Authorities (MCAs) to ensure that we have the appropriate policy response in place to respond to the impact of Covid-19 on the Further Education sector and its adult learners. We are also looking at how we can help to mitigate the impact on the activity-based funding model for apprenticeships. On 16-19 funding, we do not anticipate that the closure will affect 2019/20 or 2020/21 funding for which education institutions’ allocations have already been calculated. We are looking at the implications for future years and will clarify as soon as we are able to.