Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of increasing financial support to pre-schools during the covid-19 outbreak to help prevent the closure of those pre-schools.

The government recognises the importance of supporting the early years sector financially during the COVID-19 outbreak.

That is why on 20 July 2020 we announced that we will continue to fund childcare at the same level as before the COVID-19 outbreak, until the end of the calendar year. This will give nurseries and childminders another term of secure income, regardless of how many children are attending. Early years settings will continue to benefit from a planned £3.6 billion funding in the 2020-21 financial year to create free early education and childcare places for children.

In addition to this, the government has provided a package of support for individuals and businesses which are directly benefitting providers of childcare. This includes business rates relief and grants, the extended Self-Employment Income Support Scheme, the Business Interruption Loan Scheme, the Job Retention bonus and the extended Job Retention scheme, which will remain open until December 2020, with employees receiving 80% of their current salary for hours not worked, up to a maximum of £2,500.

Around £60 million per year of supplementary funding is also being provided to local authorities, to enable them to protect maintained nursery schools’ funding. On 24 August 2020, we announced that we will continue to provide this for the whole of the 2020-21 academic year.

We continue to work closely with both local authorities and the early years sector organisations to monitor the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on the sector.