Pre-school Education: Remote Education

(asked on 14th January 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether children receiving remote learning from their early years provider during the covid-19 lockdown will be counted in the January 2021 census as registered at that provider for the purposes of calculating local authority early years entitlement funding.


Answered by
Vicky Ford Portrait
Vicky Ford
This question was answered on 19th January 2021

On 4 January, my right hon. Friend, the Prime Minister announced that early years provision would remain open for children during the national lockdown in England. The early years entitlements exist to provide high quality education and care for pre-school children. Early education enables very young children to develop the core building blocks of communication and social skills. The government does not consider remote learning to be an effective way of delivering high quality early education for very young children, and nor can young children be cared for online.

For the purposes of the Early Years Census 2021, local authorities have been asked to count the hours of children who have been offered a place in early years provision and who are reasonably expected to attend the provision. This means children who, were it not for the impact of coronavirus on either their own personal circumstances or on the operation of their Early Years setting, would be attending Early Years provision. This does not include children who have been offered remote learning as an alternative to a place in early years provision.

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