Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the (a) adequacy of funding available for rural pre-schools and (b) quality of the learning environment for children attending a rural pre-school.

We plan to spend around £3.5 billion on our early education entitlements this year alone, more than any previous government. The government recognises the need to keep the evidence base on costs up to date.

We continue to monitor the provider market closely through a range of regular and one-off research projects which provide insight into various aspects of the provider market. That includes the 2018 Early Years Provider Costs report, which looked at a representative sample of providers, both in terms of provider type and geography, and which can be found at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/early-years-and-childcare-statistics.

As at 31 March 2019, 95% of early years providers were rated “Good” or “Outstanding” by Ofsted, compared with 68% in 2010. This information can be found at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/early-years-and-childcare-statistics.