Commenting as the government today publish a written ministerial statement and package of plans for childcare and early years education, Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders’ union NAHT, said:

“It would be a serious mistake to relax ratios in the Early Years. Given the disruption of the last two years, and the impact of the pandemic on young children, now is clearly not the time to be contemplating reducing the amount of individual care and attention those children receive. Not only is this likely to have a negative impact on young children, but it almost certainly won’t solve the problem of rising childcare costs either. The Early Years sector and the children they serve deserve better than this.”

Regarding announcements on funding for Maintained Nursery Schools, Mr Whiteman said:

“We have long argued that the government needs to review how maintained nursery supplementary funding is distributed, and so we are pleased that they are now consulting with the sector on that issue. We are also pleased to see an additional £10m of funding being allocated for these nurseries. Maintained nurseries do an incredible job supporting some of the most vulnerable children, but too many are currently struggling to survive. There are some maintained nurseries that receive very little in the way of additional funding currently and so it is right that this additional funding should be targeted primarily at those with the lowest funding levels. We will now look at the detail of what this could mean for individual nurseries, but on the surface it does appear to be a step in the right direction.”