Frontier Economics has published research today with new insights on the Government plans to convert spare primary school capacity in England into more than 3,000, 30-place new nurseries.

You can access the full report here.

Alongside the debate on whether nurseries should be located in schools, the key findings of the research are:

Is capacity in the right places?

• Spare capacity in state primary schools will only be sufficient to meet new nursery demand in most areas if schools can combine spaces across all seven age groups. But even this will be insufficient in some regions and Local Authorities (LAs).
• Combining capacity across all seven year groups seems unrealistic for most primary schools. It is more likely that spare capacity will be restricted to the youngest classes where mixing across age groups could be feasible. However, Frontier’s findings show:
  •  In three regions, only small proportions of the new nursery demand can be met with reception space alone (13% in the East Midlands, 25% in the East of England and 32% in the West Midlands).
  •  At LA level, reception spare space alone meets less than half of the new demand in just under half (49%) of LAs. Just over one in ten (11%) LAs are projected to have no spare capacity in reception.
  • If reception and Year 1 spare capacity could be combined, half of LAs would have sufficient spare space to meet demand, rising to just under two thirds (64%) if Year 2 capacity could also be combined with the younger age groups.
  •  But even by combining spare space across all three infant groups, spare capacity would be less than half the new nursery demand in 17% of LAs, with no spare capacity in 7% of LAs.

Do the numbers add up for individual schools?

• Nationally, the average number of spare places per school is projected to be two for reception pupils, four for reception and Year 1 pupils combined, and six for all three nursery class pupils. These low levels are far short of the aim of 30-place nurseries.
• Consistent with the spare capacity patterns shown regionally, the numbers of spare places per school are particularly low in the East Midlands and the East of England, and highest in London.
• This suggests that the policy might work better in London than in other regions. But the substantial excess supply of spare capacity in London could also mean that the demand is spread thinly across schools and individual schools find there is insufficient demand for their new nursery places.

Dr Gillian Paull, who led the research at Frontier Economics, comments:

“Our analysis shows that the Government’s current plan to use spare capacity in primary schools to deliver new nursery targets is unlikely to work. Even with full utilisation of spare capacity, the poor geographic match with new nursery demand leaves some areas falling well short. 

“This suggests that it may be time to explore additional approaches for expanding nursery provision. Supporting expansion of existing nurseries in schools, or providing sufficient funding to encourage expansion of the delivery of free places in private and voluntary settings, could be good places to start.”

For more information, please contact media@frontier-economics.com or call +44 (0) 20 7031 7000.