Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the oral contribution of the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State of 5 June, 2019, Official Report, Column HL122. what the evidential basis for the statement that there are now more children’s centres than at any time prior to 2008.

Based on information supplied by local authorities, as at 31 May 2019, there were 2,353 children’s centre and 700 linked sites[1] open to families and children providing children's centre services as part of a network.

Sure Start children’s centres were rolled out in three phases between 2004 and 2010. A National Audit Office memorandum to the Children, Schools and Families Committee in 2009[2] published data on the number of children’s centres rolled out in phases 1 and 2 as set out in the table below.

There are no published records of the number of children’s centres that had been opened by the end of the 2007 calendar year. The 2008 statistic is based on management information that the Department for Education holds on the pattern of children’s centre designations[3] during the roll out of Phase 2 children’s centres between 2006 and 2008. This data shows there were fewer than 2,300 children’s centres prior to 2008.

The Department for Education will publish the management information in an ad-hoc statistical release in due course.

[1] Source: Get Information about Schools database https://www.get-information-schools.service.gov.uk/.

[2] National Audit Office memorandum to Children’s Schools and Families Committee, 2009 https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/0910_sure_start_memorandum.pdf

[3] To count towards children’s centre targets, centres were officially ‘designated’, meaning that they were open and providing some services, with plans in place to deliver all the required services within two years.