Minister to make recommendation to Tynwald over pre-school places

EDUCATION Minister Anne Craine MHK will this month seek Tynwald’s approval for her Department to continue with its policy of seeking to expand free pre-school places for under fives in areas where there is a recognised shortage.

The option was one of five contained in a public consultation exercise conducted by the Department of Education.

Many children attend state-funded pre-school sessions in the year before they start school but, although the number of units has dramatically increased since 1998, places do not meet demand.

The Department currently offers 470 children five free nursery sessions a week, each lasting 2.5 hours. However, around 840 children formally start school each year at five, so – while not all parents would take up nursery places – there is still a shortfall.

Tynwald debated pre-school provision in November 2009 and the matter was adjourned until the March 2010 sitting to enable the Department to consider the best way forward. The consultation exercise was launched in January.

After carefully considering the 99 responses received, the Department will seek Tynwald’s endorsement to continue with its existing strategy of creating new nursery places where possible and where demand is highest.

The Minister said options to increase staff/child ratios to create extra places were strongly opposed by consultation respondents, while plans to reduce the number of sessions provided in existing nurseries from five to three a week so more children could be accommodated were rejected because they would be disruptive to children’s routines and would not assist working parents.

An option to charge parents for places on a means-tested basis was opposed by fewer people, but there was concern that children of those who were not in receipt of state benefits but who had limited disposable incomes would lose out.

Subject to funding being available, the Department already has plans to open pre-school units at Rushen Primary School, Michael Primary School and the new primary school being built on part of the old Noble’s Hospital site. In addition, once Ballacloan Infants’ School and Fairfield Junior School relocate to the new site in 2015, the Fairfield building could house an additional unit.

While there was a reasonable level of support for the Department’s current policy, the Minister acknowledged that others were impatient for progress.

The Minister said:

‘The Department embarked on this consultation with an open mind and it is disappointing that no one recommendation met with wholehearted community support. In the event, financial constraints have also had to colour our judgement about whether or not to embark on making further provision of this non-statutory service.

‘Taking all factors into consideration, we feel that we cannot commit to more than our declared determination to continue to seek to make provision in the identified geographical areas that lack pre-school provision at the present time.

‘The consultation exercise has been very useful in helping us structure our strategy for future provision of pre-school education and I hope that we will be able to add to our provision in the near future.’