Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the Early Years Workforce Strategy, what funding the Government plans to make available to the early years sector to support that sector in developing quality improvement support in partnership with schools and local authorities.

The Government has announced £5m per year until 2020 to support quality improvement in the early years, and local authorities can reflect the quality of provision in the free entitlement funding that they allocate to providers.

We will expand relationships between schools and early years providers via the teaching school network. Up to £3 million in 2017/18 and 2018/19, and up to £1.5 million in 2019/20 of the above funding will be allocated to this purpose.

We will also seek to support the development of models that can provide sustainable quality improvement services for all types of early years providers, particularly in those local authority areas facing particular challenges. We will work with local authorities and early years providers to do this.