Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made adequacy of maintained nursery school budgets when the supplementary funding for the 2019-20 academic year ends.

The Government recognises that maintained nursery schools are an important part of the early years sector and that they provide valuable services to disadvantaged children.

The Government invests approximately £60 million of supplementary funding each financial year for local authorities to preserve the funding rates of maintained nursery schools.

The Government plans to spend £3.6 billion to support early education in the financial year 2020-21 and details of how this is to be distributed across local authorities will be issued shortly.