Maintained Nursery Schools Funding

Chris White Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered funding for maintained nursery schools.

It is a pleasure to be here under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. It may help if I say at the outset that I do not intend to speak for long and will take only a few interventions; otherwise I shall be unfair to colleagues, many of whom want to make speeches.

We are here because we fear for the future of maintained nursery schools—the jewel in the crown of early years education. Maintained nursery schools have an outstanding record of providing for the very youngest children; 60% of them are rated outstanding by Ofsted, and 39% as good. That record of excellence is equalled nowhere else in the education sector. It is not anything like equalled even in the early years sector, where only 17% of other nurseries and preschools, and 13% of childminders, are rated outstanding. One would think that any Government would want to preserve and even expand a system that achieves such a degree of excellence, but unfortunately the reverse is true. The Prime Minister told me last week that she wants

“good-quality education at every…stage”.—[Official Report, 25 January 2017; Vol. 620, c. 285.]

However, when the Government started their consultation on early years funding, it is fair to say that it caused panic in the maintained nursery sector.

The response to the consultation has done little to allay the feeling of panic, because the Government want to fund all providers equally. They tell us that the average amount paid per hour for three and four-year-olds will rise from £4.56 to £4.94, and that no council will receive less than £4.30 an hour, so that providers can be paid at least £4. That would sound extremely reasonable if all providers had to abide by the same rules and do the same things, but they do not. That is the real problem. Even with the transitional funding that the Government have promised, one in 10 nursery schools still think they will have to close by July and 67% believe they will have to close by the end of the transitional funding.

[Chris White (Warwick and Leamington) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate. Warwick Nursery School and Whitnash Nursery School in my constituency will face a funding decrease under the proposals. Does she agree that the Government should revisit those proposals, so that such nurseries are not placed under a disadvantage or, worse still, forced to close?

[Helen Jones]

I agree absolutely, for reasons that I hope to set out. Having just seen that every school in my area will lose money under the Government’s so-called fair funding formula, even though we were already one of the lowest-funded authorities in the country, I think that we should treat everything with a fair degree of scepticism until we see the basis on which all the funding is allocated.