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Exclusive: Concern over lack of data on nursery deaths and injuries

No official records are kept on the number of deaths, serious injuries and accidents that occur while children are in nursery or other childcare settings, a Nursery World investigation reveals.

A Freedom of Information request that Nursery World has seen shows that Ofsted does not collate records of the deaths, serious injuries and accidents that occur in early years settings, and it appears that no Government department or agency is collating these records.

All registered early years providers are required to report to Ofsted any serious incidents that require children to attend a hospital.

However, the FOI response shows that Ofsted does not collect this data centrally, which means that it does not appear to keep track of the number of serious incidents related to safety in early years settings.

In its reply Ofsted said that while it could confirm that 'Ofsted holds the childcare factsheets and details of the notifications that it receives from childcare providers when there has been a notifiable incident, however we do not hold data collated from these notifications.'

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