Nursery World - Outcry from the early years sector as minister confirms testing kits for maintained nurseries only

Early years providers and organisations have slammed the Government’s decision to supply coronavirus home testing kits to maintained nurseries, but not to private and voluntary settings.

Nurseries and childminders have reported struggles both with accessing Covid tests and delays with results

Note: This article was amended on 30 September 2020 to reflect the Department for Education's position on priority testing for early years workers, which has been reinstated in the guidance (see more in note below).

In response to a parliamentary question from shadow children and early years minister Tulip Siddiq about how many Covid-19 home testing kits have been supplied to early years settings, children and families minister Vicky Ford responded that ‘all schools, including primary schools with nurseries and local authority-maintained nurseries have received an initial batch of home testing kits’.

She added, ‘This included 9,730 schools with nurseries and 388 local authority nursery schools.’

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