To ask the Minister of Education (i) to detail what steps she is taking to enable pre-schools and nurseries in the voluntary and community sector to take in more children and operate to their full capacity; and (ii) for her assessment of how this sector can be best supported to cater to those parents and children who live long distances from the nearest statutory pre-school or nursery.

It is my Department’s aim to provide one year of funded pre-school education for every child whose parents want it. Funded pre-school places are provided through the Pre-School Education Programme (PSEP), and accessed via a preference based admissions process.

The Education Authority Pre-School Education Group (EA PEG) has responsibility for securing non-statutory pre-school education provision in local areas and operates within strict parameters in doing so, allocating sufficient funded places to meet the level of demand in local areas, whilst avoiding over provision which can lead to unnecessary costs and destabilise the pre-school education programme overall. All non-statutory settings are allocated places for one year at a time, and no setting is guaranteed a minimum allocation, or one that will accommodate all first preference applications. My Department plays no role in the making of operational decisions about the allocation or funding of non-statutory pre-school education places in local areas.

The EA PEG keeps the provision of funded places under constant review as the pre-school admissions process progresses and may contact non-statutory pre-school settings directly to allocate additional funded places should they identify a need, e.g. where there is a shortfall of provision in a local area. Non-statutory settings also have flexibility to offer additional services if they wish to do so, such as wrap-around and fee paying childcare provision should they choose to do so.

All funded pre-school settings follow the same curricular guidelines and are inspected to the same educational standards. When applying for a funded pre-school education place, parents are encouraged to apply for a range of pre-school settings they would be content for their child to attend in order to maximise their opportunity of being offered a funded place in a pre-school setting of their preference. It may reassure you to know that in each of the last seven years, at least 99.8% of parents who stayed with the admissions process to the end received the offer of a funded pre-school education place in a setting of their preference.