Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether he plans to provide maintained nursery schools with a long-term funding solution based on up-to-date assessments of need.

Maintained nursery schools are an important part of the early years sector and provide valuable services, especially in disadvantaged areas. The government announced on 24 August that up to £23 million of supplementary funding will be provided to local authorities, to enable them to continue protecting the funding of maintained nursery schools during the summer term in 2021. This provides maintained nursery schools with certainty about funding for the 2020/21 academic year.

What happens after the 2020/21 academic year will be determined by the Spending Review, in the context of our priorities across early years as a whole.

This government remains committed to the long-term funding of maintained nursery schools, and any reform to the way they are funded will be accompanied by appropriate funding protections.