Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)
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Question 40: To ask the Minister for Social Protection the numbers of students who are currently in receipt of the back to education allowance in view of the fact that most of the recipients of the BTEA are attempting to learn new skills in an effort to return to work, that most of those who are paid the BTEA do not qualify for any additional grants and that any decrease in this allowance will force many to leave their course. [34856/11]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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The back to education allowance (BTEA) scheme is a second chance education opportunities scheme designed to remove the barriers to participation in second and third level education by enabling eligible people on social welfare to continue to receive a payment while pursuing an approved full-time education course that leads to a higher qualification than that already held. The allowance is paid at a standard weekly rate equivalent to the maximum rate of the relevant social welfare payment that qualifies the applicant for participation in the scheme. It essentially replaces their existing social welfare income and in addition an annual €500 cost of education allowance is payable.

Significant resources have been devoted to BTEA. €519million has been allocated over the lifetime of the National Development Plan 2007-13. The budget for BTEA in 2011 is €198.8 million which represents over 10% of an increase on 2010 expenditure which was €179.85million. The number of participants engaged with BTEA has grown steadily in recent years. Annual statistics are collated by the Department for the number of participants awarded the back to education allowance on the basis of the relevant academic year. As of 11th November 2011, there were 25,226 participants approved for the BTEA scheme. In the 2010/2011 academic year there were 25,032 participants which represented an increase of 20.3% on the previous year (20,808).