School Nurseries Must Change To Meet Challenges Ahead

2.44.27pm BST (GMT +0100) Wed 6th Aug 2003

New Figures show high levels of surplus places in 70 school nurseries ….

Today, Leeds City Council's Executive Board is meeting to discuss the future of early years services across the City, against a background of increasing surplus places at school nurseries, particularly in the inner city.

Cllr Mark Harris, Leader of the Liberal Democrat Opposition Group on Leeds City Council said :- "Early Years Services in general have just been evaluated across the City and new plans are being brought forward to improve services, not only in the inner city wards, but also in pockets of deprivation elsewhere. At the same time new figures released by Education Leeds show that 30 school nurseries have 50% or more vacant places, while another 40 have between 25% and 49.9% vacant places. Nearly all these surplus places are concentrated in the inner city areas, areas like Horsforth have no spare places at all. This shows clearly that, for whatever reason, Leeds Labour has overprovided for the demand in the inner city, while underproviding for families in the outer areas. This cannot be allowed to happen again with the new Early Years Provision."

"I will be asking the Executive Board to look into this issue as a matter of urgency, before we are forced to take action which none of us would welcome."

Cllr Richard Harker, Lib Dem Education spokesperson, added "The Council needs to address the issue of these surplus places in school nurseries urgently, and not leave them to fester as they did with surplus school places. If they ignore the issue then many of these nurseries will face closure, a disaster for the schools concerned and local parents. One reason they have so many surplus places is that school nurseries no longer meet the needs of many parents, they only provide a half day session which only fits in with school hours, not with working hours."

"The Early Years Centre have been much more successful, and one of the reasons for this must be the extended nursery hours they offer parents, and indeed the pre and after school provision they offer as well. The report before the Executive Board talks about providing these pre and after school services at schools rather than EYCs, we believe that that Early Years Centres should also look at providing school based nursery services for the local communities, through their outreach plans. Surely it would be better to concentrate services which parents want in schools rather than just allow the current nursery provision to continue with the massive number of surplus places it now generates."