Pre-school Education and Private Education: Closures

(asked on 16th June 2025) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many (a) private education providers have closed and (b) early years places have been removed in each of the last 12 months.


Answered by
Stephen Morgan Portrait
Stephen Morgan
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
This question was answered on 25th June 2025

The government’s Plan for Change sets out a commitment to give children the best start in life, breaking the link between background and opportunity.

The department does not collect this data on a monthly basis. According to the department’s most recent Childcare and Early Years Providers Survey, approximately 1,200 private nurseries closed between 2023 and 2024. In the same period around 800 new private nurseries entered the market, giving a net closures number of approximately 400. However, recent Ofsted data shows that the number of childcare places in the UK is increasing. As of the latest survey in 2024, there were approximately 1,602,500 registered childcare places, an increase of 1,370 places from March 2023.

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