PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Government Assistance (22 July 2014)

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, how many and what proportion of applicants for (a) grants or (b) loans underwritten by the Government were female in the last five years.

Asked by:
Ms Stella Creasy (Labour)

There are a number of grant and loan schemes administered by this Department through delivery partners. Many of these loans and grants are made to a company or organisation and not to named individuals. As such, we do not collect data on gender for these loans and grants. The tables below provide details of specific schemes aimed at individual applicants.

Start Up Loans

Scheme	Number of female applications	Proportion who were female application	Number of female recipients	Proportion who were female recipients
Start Up Loans (launched September 2012)	11,526	36%	6914	37%

Start Up Loans (launched September 2012) are delivered by Start Up Loan Company (SuLCo). There is no specific requirement to monitor gender, but monitoring of gender is one of the data streams SuLCo captures to aid in its reporting to government.

Student Loans[1]

Type of Support	No of females awarded loans Academic Year 2008/09 000s	Proportion who were female awarded loans Academic Year 2008/09	No of females awarded loans Academic Year 2012/13 000s	Proportion who were female awarded loans Academic Year 2012/13
Maintenance Grant Awarded	263.7	57%	302.4	54%
HE Grant Awarded	15.0	51%	0.0	42%
Adult Dependant Grant Awarded	3.6	43%	3.8	43%
Childcare Grant Awarded	9.4	91%	12.8	90%
Parental Learning Allowance Awarded	27.6	80%	31.8	81%
Travel Grant Awarded	0.7	58%	1.0	56%
Disabled Students Allowance Paid	10.9	57%	31.9	58%
Tuition Fee Loan Paid	362.6	54%	469.9	53%
Maintenance Loan Paid	419.5	54%	505.5	54%

Student Loans are delivered by Student Loans Company (SLC). There is no requirement to monitor gender. Monitoring focuses on the eligibility criteria which are set out in regulations. Gender is not part of the eligibility criteria.

The data only includes two academic years because providing all five academic years would be of disproportionate cost.

The data only includes those who were “awarded” Student Loans rather than those who “applied” and “received”. This is because students are awarded Student Loans based on eligibility criteria so only those who applied and were eligible have been recorded.

24+ Advanced Learning Loan (24+ALL)*

Academic Year	Number of learners awarded 24+ALL	Number of female learners awarded 24+ALL	Proportion of female learners awarded a 24+ALL	Number of applications for a 24+ALL	Number of female applications for a 24+ALL	Proportion of female applications for a 24+ALL
2013/14 Aug 2013 to Apr 2014	52,400	39,500	75%	-	-	-
2013/14 To end June 2014	-	-	-	69,110	52,010	75%
2014/15	-	-	-	4,760	3,680	77%

* Introduced in the 2013/14 Academic Year

In addition, Vocational Education Teaching and Learning funding is outlined in the Skills Funding Statement which sets out the Government’s priorities for the budget. It is for providers to decide how they use funding to reflect those priorities. The Skills Funding Statements 2012-15 and 2013-16 also show in the Data Annex what learning the available funding has supported over the last three years, including a breakdown by gender:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/skills-funding-statement-2013-to-2016

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/skills-funding-statement-2012-2015

[1] Excludes Careleavers Grant, Dependants Grant and Lone Parents Grant.

Answered by:
Matt Hancock (Conservative)
11 September 2014