Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 19 October 2018 to Question 179290, how many mainstream and special (a) free schools that have opened since September 2017 (i) have or (ii) have plans for nursery provision and (b) primary schools that have been approved since that date have plans for nursery provision.

Of the mainstream and special free schools opened since September 2017, 21 have nursery provision, and a further nine have plans for nursery provision. These figures are broken down in the attached table.

Of the 20 primary schools approved by the department during the same period, 13 have plans for nursery provision. This includes 11 (of 18) schools approved following local authority-run competitions (as required by Section 6A of the Education and Inspection Act 2006) and 2 (of 2) special primary schools approved through the department’s special free school application wave. These figures relate to schools that have exclusively primary-aged pupils.

As local authorities (LA) are responsible for approving LA maintained schools, we do not hold information on the number of LA maintained schools approved in this period.