The early years minister is gathering evidence to help him demand more Treasury funding for maintained nursery schools.
Nadhim Zahawi’s comments come after research highlighted the perilous state of the sector.
In July, a report by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Nursery Schools found that almost two-thirds expected to be in the red by 2020, while 29 per cent were unsure about their immediate future.
Nursery schools were given an extra £60 million by the government last year to support them through changes to the way early years education is funded, but this funding is due to end in 2020.
This morning Mr Zahawi told a conference on early years organised by the NAHT head teachers’ union that he is putting the case for the sector ahead of the government’s comprehensive spending review.
He said: “We have got a spending review coming up next year, and I am collecting the evidence, and I thank the sector for helping us to collect that evidence, to make the point very clearly to the Treasury how important these schools are to their communities, but I can’t pre-empt the spending review, obviously.”
He also repeated his call for local authorities “not to take premature decisions on maintained nursery schools”, adding: “Let’s just get through the spending review negotiations.”
NAHT general secretary Paul Whiteman told Tes this was a “helpful indication that there is a good conversation going on about funding them correctly”.
He said: “I hope we have read that right, and we will be very pleased to bring further evidence to help him with those conversations.”
One conference delegate told the minister that maintained nursery schools are having increasing difficulty accessing support for children with SEND.
He said: “In our area, for example, it is near impossible to get access to a speech and language therapist or an educational psychologist, so we are having to fund that ourselves as a school and that is taking more and more of the school budget.”
It came as a survey published today found that more than a third of maintained nursery schools have less SEND funding than last year.
Mr Whiteman told Tes that NAHT members are having to make multiple referrals to local authorities to get access to key services, and that thresholds that have to be passed to get into the system are “being interpreted in tighter and tighter ways as well”.
He added: “Money is a big part of it, obviously, but actually the demand is growing in excess of the funding that is there, but also the demand is different and changing too, and therefore we have got to find money but we have also got to find a common pattern of access.”
