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Cross-party MPs call on Government to take 'urgent action' to save nursery schools

Funding Policy & Politics
More than 70 MPs have signed a letter to education and Treasury ministers calling on them to protect funding for maintained nursery schools beyond 2020.

The letter, which was co-ordinated Labour MP Lucy Powell, the chair of the APPG on Nursery Schools, Nursery and Reception Classes,has been signed by 12 Conservative MPs including Robert Halfon, chair of the Education Select Committee and former ministers Tim Loughton and Dan Poulter, along with former Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman and David Lammy MP.

Together they warn that the future of England’s 397 maintained nursery schools is under threat if the Department for Education (DfE) and the Treasury do not find a long-term fix once transitional funding for nursery schools comes to an end in 2020.

Since 2016, maintained nursery schools have received transitional funding in recognition that they have higher costs than other early years providers because they are run as schools. The funding, which nursery schools claim they need in order to be sustainable, is due to end in 2020.

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