When called before the Education Select Committee on 18 June, Pat Glass MP pressed Liz Truss on whether she would reinstate the presumption against closure of maintained nursery schools and ringfence their funding. The minister refused to do either.
Liz Truss's arguments against protecting maintained nursery schools (in her comments to the Education Select Committee) are founded on confusion.
She says it would be wrong to treat them differently and more advantageously to primary schools. Yet in practice they have neither a level playing field with the rest of the maintained sector, nor with the private and voluntary sector. They must meet the same requirements as primary schools to employ qualified teachers and a head teacher, while having none of the economies of scale of primary schools. They also currently miss out on additional sources of funding such as the pupil premium.
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