Maintained Nursery Schools

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Powell]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I have indeed visited one of the schools in his constituency, and it is an exemplar of what is so good about the sector.

It is a false economy to allow maintained nursery schools to close. A report published recently by Yorkshire and Lincolnshire local authorities about the “hidden benefits” of maintained nursery schools showed that if they were not there, it would cost other services more than £1.2 million a year, which is considerably more than the budget of those schools.

Why have we reached the point at which we have these funding problems? Unfortunately, a perfect storm is facing our maintained nursery schools. Because of the recently introduced changes in the early years funding formula, local authorities no longer have the additional discretion to subsidise high-quality nursery schools. The 30-hours funding formula has put extra pressure on the schools, because they do not get all the funding back for taking children for 30 hours. Because maintained nursery schools are schools, they have the overheads of schools, including the costs of headteachers, special educational needs co-ordinators and others, but that is often not recognised in their funding formula.

Another factor in the perfect storm is the dramatic cut in local authorities’ funding. If, as proposed, deprivation will no longer be taken into account in the local authority funding formula, the sector will be decimated. We are already seeing the impact of that perfect storm, and we are nearing the transitional funding cliff edge. New figures confirmed by the House of Commons Library, which I have published today, show that nursery schools will lose nearly a third of their funding in 2020 if supplementary funding is not continued. We are now seeing the dire situation in which many nursery schools find themselves. More than a fifth of them are in the red, and the figure has risen significantly over the last few years.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Lucy Powell]

I will take one more intervention.

[Stephen Timms]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case. Does she agree that it is pretty shocking that nursery schools are having to decide now about admissions in September without knowing what their budget for the whole of the next academic year will be?

[Lucy Powell]

As always, my right hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is probably a consequence of Brexit—among other things—that the spending review has been pushed back and pushed back without people realising the impact that that is having on organisations that have been waiting for funding decisions, and especially on maintained nursery schools.

I have taken a number of interventions, so I will cut out some of what I had been going to say.

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[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) on leading this debate, and I am pleased to be following the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who has a distinguished record in this area. I do not agree with him that we ought not to be criticising the Government, because it is a shocking state of affairs that schools are having to make decisions about which children they will offer places to in September, the start of the next school year, and they do not know what their budget is going to be for next year. That may not be the fault of the Minister on the Front Bench today, but it certainly is the fault of the Government and it is absolutely right for Parliament to point that out.

In 1984, I become a councillor in the Little Ilford ward in my constituency, and I became a governor of Sheringham Nursery School—Sheringham Nursery School and Children’s Centre, as it now is—in that ward. I have known the school for 35 years, in which time it has had two headteachers. Maureen Haynes was the young head there when I became a governor, and she carried on until her retirement, with her successor being Dr Julian Grenier. The school has done a fantastic job throughout that time. Of course, it benefited immensely from the investment by the Government from 1997 to 2010, when early years was a high priority. Sheringham was expanded, for example, from one storey to two. These days, I regularly hold surgeries there, and it is clear that it is more than a school; as my hon. Friend described at the start, it is a hub for the community, where people can look for support with parenting and with other challenges they are facing.

Sheringham has lots of admirers, as is the case with most maintained nursery schools, as we have been reminded. Ofsted designated it as outstanding five years ago. Three months ago, Ofsted carried out a short inspection, and I just want to read the opening of the subsequent letter sent to the headteacher about what the inspection team found. I apologise for the sense of pride I feel about the support that is being provided in my constituency. Ofsted said this:

“The leadership team has maintained the outstanding quality of education in the school since the last inspection.

You and your staff have ensured that the nursery provision continues to be of exceptionally high quality. Leaders are extremely knowledgeable and passionate about early years education. All staff are well trained and have a thorough understanding of how young children learn and develop. The nursery is a calm, orderly and well-organised environment. Children’s behaviour is outstanding. Children learn how to share resources, join in activities and make decisions. The safe learning environment and an excellent range of resources stimulate, as well as extend, children’s experiences. Activities are extremely well matched to their needs.”

It continued:

“Your role as a national teaching school enables you to share the expertise in early years education with other local providers. Leaders and staff have forged strong links with private nursery settings and local primary schools to deliver professional development for their staff.”

Those last couple of sentences highlight how Sheringham supports private nurseries in the nurseries in the area as well, so that the number of children and families who benefit is much greater than the number who attend that school. It is a Greater London Authority early years hub and it supports more than 100 private and voluntary nurseries. That is an important point to underline. The hon. Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) asked the pertinent question: why do these schools cost more? The fact that they support others is an important part of the reason why.

Let me read one more paragraph from that Ofsted letter:

“Children are encouraged to be independent learners. Adults intervene skilfully when needed to support their learning but do not interfere unnecessarily. The levels of interaction between adults and children is exceptionally high. As a result…two-year-olds make very strong progress from low starting points. This exceptional start gives them an excellent foundation for the next stage of their education and beyond.”

All that is now under threat because of the uncertainty over funding. Decisions must be made soon about which children to admit to Sheringham next September, and throughout London to the other 79 maintained nursery schools in 24 of the 33 London boroughs. Nursery schools cannot make those decisions until they know whether the current funding will last until the summer term of 2020. At the moment, they do not have a clue.

As the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) said in her speech, the supplementary funding was supposed to be just a stopgap until a long-term solution was put in place, but there is still not even a proposal for a long-term solution. Schools are making admissions decisions now without knowing whether they will still be funded beyond halfway through the next school years. Those that are in deficit cannot adopt deficit reduction plans because they do not know what their income is going to be in 2020.

It is of course the case that maintained nursery schools are more costly than other provision. That is partly because the law requires them, as schools, to have several specified postholders, and it is partly because, like Sheringham, they support other private and voluntary nurseries as well, but it is also because they disproportionately support children with special educational needs and disability. Sheringham has 68 children with SEND—more than a third of the total roll—including 10 children with high needs. Other settings simply could not support those children. The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham was absolutely right to make the point about these nursery schools being a safe place for children like that to go. The loss of that support for those children would be catastrophic.

London Councils points out that as well as employing specialist teachers who can recognise SEND early and develop plans to ensure that children with SEND are supported and ready for school when the time comes, maintained nursery schools play a crucial role in social mobility. They prioritise working with the most disadvantaged children and provide high-quality teaching and support that helps to narrow the gap between disadvantaged children and their peers. I think we all recognise how important that is. London Councils reports that maintained nursery schools in more than a third of the London boroughs may be threatened with closure if the ring-fenced funding that has supported them for the past three years is not maintained beyond next March. The majority of headteachers interviewed for research that was published by London Councils in September said that they would have to start turning away pupils with more complex needs unless more funding was secured.

The Minister has recognised publicly and sincerely the value of the contribution made by maintained nursery schools. If he needs any further convincing, a visit to Sheringham in my constituency, just 45 minutes away, would certainly do the trick. I am sure he recognises the importance of confirming that funding will continue and I urge him to make sure that it does.

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[Stephen Timms]

I think that that research will be useful, but can the Minister at least give an assurance today that maintained nursery schools will know by the end of the current financial year what their future funding is going to be?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am pushing as hard as I can to ensure that we are able to go back to the sector with a position as soon as possible. As I said earlier in relation to the urgency over admissions and the lack of clarity over the budget, I hope I can reassure colleagues that this is at the top of my to-do list in the Department.

We already know that there is significant variation both in the services that maintained nursery schools provide and the cohorts of children that they work for. Maintained nursery schools were originally set up over a century ago to serve the poorest communities. It is clear, as many colleagues said earlier, that the gentrification of certain areas means that some of them may be working with a different profile of community or that that has added to the pressure, and I look forward to meeting colleagues who want to discuss that further. While many nurseries take higher proportions of children with special educational needs and disabilities, and children in receipt of the early years pupil premium, there are others that, on the surface, do not look all that different from other providers. We will need to think carefully about how we respond to any disparities as we consider long-term solutions.

That said, I am conscious of the position in which local authorities find themselves. Many colleagues have made clear the urgency of addressing the financial crunch. Local authorities are already planning for 2019-20 and want to know how to treat their maintained nursery schools. I want everyone in the Chamber to know that I absolutely understand that. However, local authorities will also understand that the next spending review, which will set funding after March 2020, has not yet been announced. Owing to uncertainty over the exact date of the spending review, we are considering how best to handle transitional arrangements for several areas, including maintained nursery schools.

Despite such uncertainties, I am luckily not aware of closure processes starting under the local authorities to which I have spoken. That is an important point, showing that they are taking a sensible wait-and-see approach. I am grateful to them for their patience, and, as I have said elsewhere, I urge them to wait for the outcome of the process we have embarked upon before making decisions.

I want to take the opportunity again to thank the hon. Member for Manchester Central for her unstinting work in this area. She mentioned the deficit, and concern is increasing that maintained nursery schools are struggling to keep the books balanced, as many colleagues from around the country have said. A recent survey by the all-party parliamentary group on nursery schools, nursery and reception classes made a valuable contribution to the discussion. I think around 20% of maintained nursery schools were in deficit in 2017-18, which is slightly lower than the figure in the APPG’s survey, but that does not mean that we should be complacent. It is possible that some of the difference reflects the anxiety within the maintained nursery school sector in the same way that another APPG survey from two years ago suggested that around 60 schools may be under threat of immediate closure, and I am pleased that that number of closures did not happen over the subsequent two years. I hope that we can find a long-term solution, and that is my message to the APPG before the number of schools in deficit rises.

The message that I give to the House and take from the House is that we want to find a long-term solution for maintained nursery schools. In doing so, we will need to ensure that the high-quality specialist services that many of them provide in some of our poorest communities continue is safeguarded for the benefit of the children in their care. We also need to ensure that how we spend money across the childcare sector as a whole is structured to give all children the best possible start, so that they can go on to fulfil their potential. That, ultimately, is our shared ambition.