The Government has said that it intends to use the Bill to clarify the position for nursery schools and nursery classes in schools - that they will be able to charge for provision on top of the 15 hours for three and four-year-olds.
Associations representing nursery schools have opposing views on the plan.
Megan Pacey, chief executive of Early Education, said she welcomed it because it would 'level the playing field' by enabling nursery schools to compete with the PVI sector in offering full daycare for parents.
She said some maintained nursery schools, particularly in children's centres, have already been offering hours outside the free entitlement and charging for them.
'Being able to charge parents who can afford to pay' would help nursery schools to offer 'a much more mixed provision' and help them to be sustainable and continue to offer places for disadvantaged children, said Ms Pacey. 'I think there will be flexibility to look at the individual needs of settings.'
But Pauline Trudell of the National Campaign for Real Nursery Education, which has called since the 1960s for free state nursery education for all threeand four-year-olds, said, 'We can only deplore measures that privatise what should be a universal entitlement and return us decisively to a system of early education and care divided by differences of wealth and class.
'Policy and legislation introduced by the previous Government blurred the distinction between early education and childcare and began a process in which it seemed feasible that state nursery schools could be detached from the school system proper.'
She said that with changes to the school admissions policy, which from September will take children into primary school immediately after their fourth birthday, the impact of the Early Years Single Funding Formula, and cuts to extended services, state nursery schools and centres are already forced to make redundancies.
'We will eventually be left with the only free state nurseries being those provided for poor children - akin to the old social services daycare centres. This makes nonsense of Government rhetoric about improving the achievement of children who live in poverty.'
At Lilycroft Nursery School, Bradford, awarded outstanding by Ofsted, head teacher Eleanor Larmour said charging parents outside the 15 hours could help with sustainability. The 60-place setting has already had its funding cut from 40 full-time places to just ten.
She acknowledged that most parents couldn't afford a full-time place. 'We fought hard against losing the full-time places. There is a risk that it could lead to a change in central Government funding.'
