Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many schools originally chose to be early adopters of the Early Years Foundation Stage reforms when first invited on 20 January 2020; how many of those schools have since decided not to be early adopters; and how many schools will be early adopters in September 2020.

In January, approximately 3,400 schools signed up to participate as early adopters of the Early Years Foundation Stage reforms in the 2020/21 academic year.

On 6 July, the Department wrote to these schools to ask whether they still felt able to participate in light of the COVID-19 outbreak, following which 236 schools confirmed their withdrawal. Following data verification of all early adopter registrations, as of 25 August the final confirmed number of early adopter schools was 2,795.

These early adopter schools will begin to benefit from new, strengthened early years policy and practice from this September, a year ahead of statutory implementation in 2021/22.