Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment his Department has made of the educational benefits to children of maintained nursery schools in Salford.

The department has funded longitudinal studies; the ‘Study of early education and development’ and the ‘Effective pre-school, primary and secondary education project’. These studies show that high quality early education supports children’s development in the short term and has benefits for educational outcomes in the long term. There are no maintained nursery schools in Salford. No specific assessment has been conducted on the educational benefits of local authority run nurseries in Salford.