To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills how much was spent in each year since 1998 to encourage Institutes of Enterprise; how many new institutes were endowed in each year; how many students attended institutes in each year; and if he will make a statement. (85553)

I have been asked to reply.

Science Enterprise Centres (SECs)—sometimes known as Institutes of Enterprise—were created under the Science Enterprise Challenge Programme. The first round, which covered the academic years 1999/2000 and 2000/01, allocated £28,900,000 to fund the creation of 12 SECs across the UK. The second round, for academic years 2001/02, 2002/03, awarded £14,500,000, as continuation funding to six of the existing SECs and to create one further SEC, brining the total number of SECs to 13.

Student attendance for the four years of the Science Enterprise Challenge Programme is as follows¹:

After 2003 enterprise education became a devolved matter and, in England, was subsumed into the Higher Education Innovation Fund, under which individual HEIs have the choice where to focus their activities.