Nurseries facing closure as heads begin campaign

ABIRMINGHAM nursery headteacher says her school could be forced to to close as it faces a £100,000 funding cut.

Sally Leese, head of Castle Vale Nursery School and Children’s Centre, said Government changes to nursery funding meant she would struggle to pay her staff.

She and other heads are to collect signatures for a petition calling on the Government to think again about plans to change the way nurseries are funded, first revealed in the Post last week.

Nursery schools in Birmingham could lose almost half their funding under Government changes which threaten to push them to crisis point.

The cuts to be inflicted on Birmingham schools are double those due to be imposed on schools in Windsor and Maidenhead, the local authority covering Prime Minister Theresa May’s constituency

Ms Leese said: “Our school budget will be cut by just over £100,000. It will just be gone.”

She added: “We’ve highlighted this to the government quite a few times and they’ve said they may give us a bit more for the first couple of years as a transitional period to implement this, so we can make savings by basically turning more lights off and so on.

“I don’t think they understand that it is over £100,000 and that’s going to be hard to find, especially when more than 80 per cent of our budget goes directly on salaries.

“Unless we get rid of those staff I don’t see how we are going to do it.”

It could lead to the nursery closing, she said.

She added: “If we can’t afford our staff, can’t afford to carry out the duties. we have to carry out, then nursery schools won’t exist.”

The Department for Education said it needed to change the way nurseries were funded because of its plan to give working parents 30 hours a week of free childcare.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “It is right that we look at how we can make funding fairer across the early years sector – alongside this we want to look at how we can make maintained nursery schools, which have higher running costs, sustainable in the long term.

“Our proposals for extra funding for nursery schools are for at least two years and will provide stability for the sector. “This funding is part of our record investment in childcare – £6 billion per year by 2020, and we will be consulting the maintained nursery schools sector on future funding in due course.” The DoE launched a consultation earlier this year arguing that the present system was “unfair” because schools in some places received far more than schools in others. Government figures also illustrate how much funding is set to fall.

An analysis by the NAHT found that nursery schools in Birmingham received an average of £8.36 per hour in 2015/16, which would fall to £4.44 per hour in 2017/18 under the new arrangements.

Unless we get rid of those staff I don’t see how we are going to do it. Sally Leese, head of Castle Vale Nursery School