Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson today unveiled the first wave of the government’s pledge to provide 3,000 new nurseries by repurposing spare primary school space. This month, schools will be able to apply for a slice of £15m of capital funding targeted at unlocking or extending up to 300 new nurseries in the first wave. 

Childcare funding is likely to extend up to 30 hours a week for working parents by 2025. Beginning from 2017, schools need to have justification of how their proposals will support the local needs before accessing part of the funds. Spring 2025 Capital funding will be delivered to providers to support the rollout of the first cohort of nursery places, part of the ambitious target to establish 3,000 new nursery places in primary schools as one of several measures contributing to a comprehensive strategy for improving access to and quality of early years education and childcare throughout England. 

Early years provision remains highly disproportionate, with the most disadvantaged areas frequently seeing the highest barriers to availability. 

To make sure that the program is beneficiary to all families, the Department for Education will take what it learns from this first round and apply those lessons to future rounds, focusing especially on how to serve harder to reach and low-income neighborhoods most effectively. Schools will similarly be invited to show interest in follow-on rounds, which would help the department gauge demand across regions. 

Discuss with your local authority, governing body and other relevant partners how you will consult pupils in your planning for place needs in order to take that into account; assess the sufficiency of childcare services in the area; consider what further steps you will take to open or expand nurseries and how you will manage them. 

The initiative will respond to the greater need for quality early years education particularly in regions that have never had much access to this service. The government would encourage the collaboration of schools and local authorities, which can become the cornerstone of a much more equitable approach to the educational and developmental needs of young children and their families. 

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