Schools White Paper

Graham P Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 13th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

I would like to put on the record the fact that my partner is a school governor at St John’s in Baxenden.

The point I want to raise is the negative impact that forced academisation will have on grant-maintained local authority nurseries. In an answer given to my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) on 22 March, the Minister said—I summarise—that at some point in the future, the Government would think about whether state nurseries would be forced to become academies.

As of 4 March this year, there were 41,227 young pupils in grant-maintained nurseries at 406 nursery schools in England. Some authorities have very low numbers of such pupils in schools, and the plain fact is that small nurseries with small class sizes are not big enough to academise. Their size and nature mean that they cannot afford to procure central services themselves, so they are reliant on the local education authority. This ideological shambles of forced academisation has resulted in the Government having to leave these nurseries out on a limb. Councils will still have to retain core educational support services.

What comes next for these local authority nurseries? In the meantime, with an uncertain future, they are unable to plan. The Government have injected a huge degree of instability. The all-party parliamentary group on nursery schools and nursery classes reported last month that there is growing evidence that the maintained nursery schools in particular are at risk of closure.

We must remember the important difference between primary education and early years childcare. Early years childcare is a multi-agency environment. Many of these nurseries are already losing co-located services and income because of this Government’s policies. The outrageous cut of £685 million from Lancashire county council has resulted in one of my local authority nurseries, Fairfield, losing the presence and shared cost base of its neighbourhood centre, as the county council consolidates and contracts these services.

It is not just damaging cuts and forced academisation that threaten these LEA nurseries, because the Government’s shambolic unplanned provision for increases in free childcare has also created problems. The net result is chaos for the UK’s two, three and four-year-olds and their parents. According to the House of Commons Library, in Bristol alone, 23.2% of three and four-year-olds attend LEA nurseries, while in my own county of Lancashire, 15.3% of three and four-year olds attend them. Let us not forget that parental choice is about choosing high-quality, state-provided nurseries. Local education provision is important to parents, who want fully qualified staff and support services. The reality today is that this Government have no answer to the forced academisation programme, and grant-maintained nurseries are going to suffer as a consequence.