Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how the £24 million of additional funding for maintained nursery schools will be distributed; and what estimate they have made of the amount per capita.

Since 2017, we have been providing around £60 million per year of supplementary funding to local authorities so that they could maintain funding levels for maintained nursery schools (MNS). We listened to concerns about the timing of the 2019 Spending Review and announced that we would provide some local authorities with further supplementary funding, of around £24 million, to enable them to continue the same levels of funding for their MNS for the whole of the 2019/20 academic year. That additional funding will be distributed on the same basis as the current supplementary funding. Full details of current arrangements can to found in the attached technical note and at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/early-years-national-funding-formula-allocations-and-guidance.

All early years’ entitlement funding is allocated on the basis of number of hours delivered, using data from the annual Early Years and Childcare Providers census. No estimate has been made of the funding on a per capita basis.