Nursery school heads want freedom to convert to academies

Chaired by Graham Stuart MP, former chair of the education select committee, the second meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Nursery Schools and Nursery Classes will hear from nursery school leaders and headteachers who say that nursery schools will be left in ‘an anomalous position’ as more schools convert to academies.

More than 370 nursery school representatives are expected to attend today's meeting.

The APPG itself has been set up to to highlight and protect the high quality education provided by the remaining 400 plus nursery schools, many of which are also models of training and good practice for the early years’ community.  

In a statement, the group outlines fears’ that the academisation of schools will leave nursery schools outside the new infrastructures and even more vulnerable to closure.

The group will also debate what might be the best models for academy status for nursery schools – for example whether nursery schools should join other schools in Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) or start their own MATs with other nursery schools.

Beatrice Merrick, chief executive of Early Education, said, ‘If nursery schools within MATs are given a strong overarching role in relation to the foundation phase in all the MAT’s schools that could be a powerful model for improvement in the early years. But there’s also much to be said for a groups of maintained nursery schools forming their own MATs.

‘Specialist nursery MATs would foster the specialist early years’ expertise which nursery schools currently embody, and provide a lead for school to school improvement in the foundation stage, and to support PVIs at a time when local authority early years teams are losing capacity for quality improvement work.’

The DfE has recognised that once a critical mass of schools has converted to academy status, the local authority will no longer be able to support its remaining schools and should be able to ask Government to convert the rest,’ said Dr Margy Whalley, director of Pen Green Centre in Corby, which also comprises a research arm and nursery school.

‘This same argument applies to maintained nursery schools – how will local authorities support them when they no longer have the infrastructure to support other schools? In some local authorities which are pressing ahead with full academisation in the next year or two, this is an urgent question.’

• The meeting will also call on the Government to:
• guarantee maintained nursery schools receive a viable funding rate via a Schools Block lump sum component (comparable to ensuring payment of sparsity funding to rural schools);
• revive and renew the Presumption Against Closure with a “double lock” requiring agreement from local authority and government before any closures;
• give maintained nursery schools the freedom to convert to academy status either alone or as part of a MAT;
• give maintained nursery schools dedicated professional advice and support through the process of becoming an academy.

The number of nursery schools is in sharp decline, only 408 remain in England, with 200 closing since 1980. Due to their high quality many nursery schools are relatively expensive for councils to run in the short-term, leaving them more vulnerable to cuts.

The APPG reports that 59 per cent of nursery schools are graded ‘outstanding’ and 38 per cent as ‘good’ by Ofsted.