Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the role of maintained nursery schools in tackling educational inequalities; and if he will make a statement.

Maintained nursery schools (MNS) are commonly located in disadvantaged areas and all but one is rated good or outstanding by Ofsted. We are providing around £60 million a year of supplementary funding to enable local authorities to maintain funding rates for MNS until at least 2019-20.