To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if he will implement the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education recommendations for additional funding for the higher education sector in 1998–99 and 1999–2000. [31246]

We have announced a package of measure which will allow the higher education sector to spend an extra £165 million in 1998–99. This includes an additional £125 million for universities and colleges in England to maintain and improve quality and standards, and to make a start on the backlog of maintenance and equipment replacement. The package meets the Dearing Committee's first priority of limiting the real terms reduction in funding per student to 1 per cent.Decisions for 1999–2000 and beyond will be taken in the context of the Government's Comprehensive Spending Review. But we have made clear that savings from the new funding arrangements for higher education would be used to improve quality, standards and opportunities for all in further and higher education.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what proportion of pupils from (a) grammar schools, (b) independent schools, (c) grant-maintained schools and (d) comprehensive schools went into higher education in 1997–98. [30732]

The information is not available in the form requested. The following table gives the prior educational establishment of students who accepted full-time and sandwich undergraduate places through the Universities & Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) in Autumn 1997.