Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Graham Stuart and Sam Gyimah

Monday 1st December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

9. What assessment she has made of the potential merits of allowing nursery schools to become academies.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

Many maintained nursery schools are delivering high-quality early education, often in disadvantaged areas where that provision can make the greatest difference. Our aim is to improve parent access to high-quality early-years provision, enable a diverse market and ensure that nurseries are part of that market. However, the current legislation does not allow maintained nursery schools to become academies, but we will keep that under review.

[Mr Stuart]

I welcome the Minister’s response—or I think I do—that this is going to be kept under review. Too many maintained nursery schools—centres of excellence anchored, for the most part, in the poorest communities in the country—have been lost under successive Governments. Would not academy status give them the opportunity to ensure that they continue to help the Government in raising standards for all and, most importantly, closing the gap between outcomes for rich and poor?

[Mr Gyimah]

I welcome the enthusiasm of the Chairman of the Education Committee for maintained nurseries. I have visited Pen Green maintained nursery in Corby, which is an excellent example. He mentioned harnessing their quality. We have invested £5.5 million in teaching schools so that maintained nurseries can spearhead this and help to spread quality across the sector. He is right to indicate that 4,000 schools have benefited from academy status. As I said, we will keep the situation under review as opportunities arise to reconsider the legislative framework for maintained nurseries.

Nursery Schools

Debate between Graham Stuart and Sam Gyimah

Tuesday 9th September 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Gyimah]

I thank the hon. Lady for making that point. I am very aware of the Education Committee’s recommendations and I will come to some of the points in a moment. As the hon. Lady rightly said, we should not just look at what other countries do, but remember to praise the good practice in this country. There is great practice and some excellent and visionary practitioners in this country. There is a lot to be proud of.

We have universal provision for three and four-year-olds in this country so every three and four-year-old is entitled to 15 hours of child care. That is a tremendous achievement. The latest “Education at a Glance” report from PISA—the programme for international student assessment—puts us in the top 10 of OECD countries, which we can be proud of. More than 90% of three and four-year-olds in this country receive 15 hours of free child care at the moment.

On targeting, the Government have introduced the free early-years entitlement for two-year-olds, which will benefit 260,000 two-year-olds from the least advantaged families in the country who will receive 15 hours of care a week. We should be proud of that, but we must be targeted in how we use finite resources.

We have also introduced the early-years pupil premium, which is £300 a year for three and four-year-olds. I assure hon. Members that maintained nursery schools will receive the early-years pupil premium from 2015 and I hope that private voluntary independent organisations and maintained nurseries will use that to help to boost their ability to attract higher-quality staff for children in nurseries.

There is a lot to be proud of, and the Government have a plan and clear priorities for the early years. However, funding for maintained nursery schools is obviously an issue, and we fund that provision through local authorities to enable them best to make decisions for parents and children. Some 49 local authorities do not have any maintained nursery schools and 43 have only one or two. Therefore, a funded approach that treats maintained nursery schools differently would not be fair to those areas. Many areas of high deprivation have good inspection results in early-years foundation stage profile outcomes. Some make use of maintained nursery schools as part of local provision, but others are doing that with high-quality nursery classes in primary schools and private providers, not large numbers of maintained nursery schools.

Maintained nursery schools play an important role in many areas, but our approach, including that to funding, must ensure that parents retain a choice of early education provision that meets their needs and, whatever their choice, that they can be assured of high-quality provision. Maintained nursery schools are more costly than other providers, but it is for local authorities to determine funding levels. There are often good reasons for higher funding levels and many local authorities have chosen to retain them with their single funding formula, indicating that most deliver excellent value for money, but they are not the only solution.

Many primary school nurseries and private and voluntary providers offer high-quality, affordable early-years provision that is good value for money, and that provision must also be funded fairly. We must ensure the highest-quality provision across the board and our policy approach and funding decisions should reflect that.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

In their response to the Select Committee’s report, the Government noted the engagement in teaching school alliances of nursery schools and said that it was collecting and sharing best practice. Can the Minister add anything now or write to me about that and whether he thinks that involvement through teaching school alliances could help by sharing that expertise with others and whether funding could be provided to allow continuation of the high-quality services we get from nursery schools?

[Mr Gyimah]

My hon. Friend the Chairman of the Select Committee makes an excellent point, and I will write to him on that specifically. He alludes to quality and we know that a large proportion of maintained nurseries deliver outstanding provision, and in areas where maintained nursery schools rightly remain part of the answer, we want local authorities to work with them to ensure they spread their expertise. We are seeing that already. Nineteen maintained nursery schools are designated teaching schools and a further 109 are members of a teaching school alliance. I will write to the Chairman of the Select Committee with the details of how that is working. In Bristol, for example, where maintained nursery schools are linked to local primary schools and private sector providers in a teaching school alliance, they can share and disseminate best practice. That is an important way to guarantee the continued success of our best, high-quality maintained nursery schools.

Qualified teaching status and early-years teachers were mentioned by the hon. Member for North West Durham. I believe, as do all hon. Members here, that there is a need to raise the status and quality of the professionals in the early-years sector. We cannot say that early years are critical to a child’s development and not do everything we can to attract the best people into the sector. There are several ways of doing that. For example, one of my first decisions as Minister was to look at the early-years educator level 3 qualification. On literacy and numeracy, staff who qualify for level 3 must have GCSE level A to C in maths and English. We phased that in for the first year and it will be on exit, but after 2015, they will have to have that on entry to start a level 3 early educator course and to qualify.

A broader issue is attracting graduates to early-years education. QTS is one way to do so, but not the only one. We cannot set pay expectations for all early-years providers. The private voluntary independent sector is significant in the early-years sector, so we must think of ways of attracting the best graduates into the sector.

[Mr Gyimah]

The shadow Minister makes an excellent point. If people believe they were misled about a course, the first solution is to ensure that the details are communicated clearly to people when they sign up. On the broader issue of discrepancy in pay, we must look at that as it applies to the whole early-years sector, not just between primary school teachers and early-years teachers. The problem can be addressed in several ways. However, there is a more fundamental point. I was speaking to Andreas Schleicher, who presented to the Department on the PISA rankings yesterday, and raising quality is not just a question of increasing the salary; we need to ensure that we have the right sort of career progression. If we look at other countries where teachers are very motivated and excited, they have career progression built into the system as well. It is a knotty issue to get around, but it is in my in-tray and I am looking at it.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

The central ask is that having set out the aspirations so clearly, the Government need to come forward with a strategy. The Minister said that what we are discussing can be done in a number of ways and that there are knotty issues, but they need to set out a strategy for how the proposals can be implemented. At least, we can then discuss it. Will he commit to producing a strategy to bring about the true integrated nought-to-18, or nought-to-19, work force the Government say they want?

[Mr Gyimah]

I thank my hon. Friend for another forceful point. As I said, it is in my in-tray. It is something that I am looking at, and at the appropriate moment, I will let him know what my thoughts are.

Ofsted assessments were also raised, I think, by the hon. Member for North West Durham. I assure her that from September 2014, Ofsted will give primary schools a separate assessment for their early-years provision.