AQW 14638/22-27

Mr Nick Mathison
Alliance Party
Strangford

Tabled Date: 09/09/2024
Answered On Date: 11/09/2024
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister of Education to detail (i) the current estimated spend required to deliver the pre-school standardisation programme; and (ii) the budget that has been provided to the programme for the 2024-25 financial year.

Answer:

A Scoping Study was commissioned by my Department in late 2022 to assess options and costs for a pre-school standardisation programme. The final report for the study is available on the DE website at Final Scoping Study Report | Department of Education (education-ni.gov.uk).

In addition to the core objective of providing all children with 22.5 hours per week of funded pre-school education, the report identifies and costs a range of potential additional actions including changes to pre-school staffing ratios.

The report estimates the additional cost of transitioning to a standardised session length to be within the range £242.8m to £337.8m, uplifted for wage and price inflation over a 10-year implementation period. Other options set out in the report such as increasing the staff-to-child ratio and improving access to SEN support would add a further £156m over the same 10-year implementation period and providing a funded school meal for all pupils would add a further £7.8m per annum.

The scale of what I can do in implementing options contained in the report and the pace at which we can progress will be determined by the budget allocated by the Executive.

£25m has been earmarked for an ELC Strategy in the current financial year, with £5m of that assigned for PSEP standardisation. This will allow me to begin the process of transitioning pre-school sessions to 22.5 hours and I hope to transition approximately 2,200 pre-school places for September 2025.