Question
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much his Department has spent from the public purse on grants and loans to academies and free schools since 2015.
This answer is the replacement for a previous holding answer.
Answered on
14 March 2018
As of January 2018, 3.76 million pupils were being taught in academies, including free schools – 47% of the English school population. The department’s spend and loans to academies and free schools in the last two full Financial Years, is as detailed in the table attached.
We are in the process of making a routine update to the data that we hold on pre and post-opening grant allocations for free schools, university technical colleges and studio schools, following the opening of new schools in September. We will be publishing the latest data on GOV.UK in due course.
Further information can be found in the Department's Consolidated annual report and accounts, for the year ended 31 March 2017, available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/dfe-annual-reports and in the National Audit Office report on Converting maintained schools to academies, Feb 2018, which can be found at: https://www.nao.org.uk.