Childcare

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Tuesday 30th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

The noble Baroness is quite right; I have seen that report, and I am very grateful for it. We will have the opportunity to debate it in great detail tomorrow in Committee, when I will be saying more about that. We will be considering the report extremely carefully and making any necessary appropriate amendments.

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware of the decline in numbers of the highly regarded nursery schools attached to primary schools? Is he looking at how those numbers can be increased in order to develop capacity in high-quality early years provision?

[Lord Nash]

I am not entirely sure that the noble Earl is right about declining numbers; I will clarify that for him. I think that provision has in fact been increasing, and we have been making every effort to expand that high-quality provision. We know that it is of the highest quality and tends to have higher-quality staff. We have reduced the bureaucracy to enable primary schools to open nurseries, and we have now allowed free school applicants to apply to open nurseries attached to their primary places. We have been working with a number of schools that are already doing this to learn from the practice so that we can share that practice with other primary schools that want to open nursery provision.