With the Government finally releasing a list of the total expenditure for its flagship welfare education programme, more and more parents are starting to realise just how much money has been spent on the scheme.
As we reported last month, more than £3 billion was spent on a £2.6 billion scheme that has not been released publicly.
We spoke to the Education Secretary Nicky Morgan last week about the progress made in the implementation of the scheme and she revealed that a total of £2,966,813 had been spent in just three months, and the remaining £1.5 billion was allocated for further development.
Morgan also confirmed that an additional £6.7 million had been allocated to the scheme over the next four months.
The Government announced in December that the total spending on the system would increase to £2 billion, but the number of children enrolled is still relatively small.
Of course, the Government has been spending more money than expected to get the program rolling and Morgan admitted that this had led to some confusion.
“The Government has said that they are still getting the funding for the education scheme and we’ve had some confusion about the details,” she told us.
But Morgan said that the Government would soon release a more complete set of figures.
“[The Government] has a clear timetable for achieving the targets we’ve set for this.
It’s clear that the number [of children] will go up,” she said.”
We are seeing more and further funding commitments being put in place and I think that will continue to be the case.”