The information requested has been provided in the attached table.

The analysis includes all children aged 5 years old and under in state-funded primary and special schools. The information requested is not available for children with Education, Health and Care Plans who are not in school.

Further information can be found in the annual 'Special educational needs in England' statistical releases published at the following link, including national figures by all primary SEN types and age (Table B): https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-special-educational-needs-sen.

I fully recognise the importance of the early years education that is provided by nursery schools—maintained nursery schools—and, indeed, by others. That was why many years ago, when I was the chairman of education in the London Borough of Merton, I was happy to complete a programme that ensured we put in early years education for those parents who wanted it, at a time when the Labour Government and others—the Labour Government previously and the Government at the time—were not putting it in. We recognise the importance of nursery education.

We are determined to support as many families as possible with access to high-quality, affordable childcare. As of March 2017, the proportion of childcare providers judged good or outstanding is at its highest ever at 93%. In the twelve Early Delivery areas, over 15,000 30 hours places were successfully delivered to eligible parents.

To help ensure quality, all providers offering government funded entitlements, including the 15 hours of funded early education of disadvantaged 2 year-olds, have to be registered with Ofsted and follow the EYFS Framework.

In March 2017, we published an early years workforce strategy which aims to support employers in attracting, retaining and developing their staff.

We are, for example, working with the sector to develop more robust criteria for the content of level 2 childcare qualifications, which will help level 2 workers to gain the knowledge and skills they need to deliver effective early education and childcare and to progress.

A well-qualified workforce in the early years is absolutely crucial and that is why the Government has committed to developing a workforce strategy which will help employers attract, retain and develop staff to deliver high quality provision.

This will include a response to a recent consultation the Department published on the literacy & numeracy qualification requirements for level 3 Early Years Educator staff. This consultation closed on 28 November 2016 and received over 4,000 responses.

The Department is currently analysing the responses and a government response will be published in the new year.

The Department has committed to revisiting the GCSE requirement for level 3 Early Years Educator staff and we will be announcing the next steps on this in due course.

The Department has also committed to developing a workforce strategy to help early years settings attract, retain and develop staff to deliver high quality provision. We have already spoken to large parts of the sector to seek their views on the challenges they face and we will be considering Government’s role in helping to remove barriers as part of the strategy.

In 2014-15 the spend on Special Educational Needs support for children under five years from the high needs block of the dedicated schools grant allocated to Lancashire County Council was about £2.53 million. This information is as reported by the local authority and published in the following document: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/section-251-outturn-2014-to-2015-data

The government has confirmed that the expectation that all schools will become academies by 2020 does not include the early years.

We know that close working between primary schools – whether they are academies or maintained schools - and nursery schools is essential to improving pupils’ transition to Reception. We would expect those excellent local relationships that already exist to continue, regardless of whether the school is an academy or not.

The requirements have been in effect since 2014 for individuals taking the level 3 Early Years Educator qualifications.

The requirement for level 3 Early Years Educator staff to hold a GCSE Maths and English at grade C or above was introduced to make sure that new entrants to the workforce have the numeracy and literacy skills they need to operate in a level 3 role. Staff working in level 3 roles can have a range of responsibilities, all of which require them to be highly skilled and well-qualified. Level 3 staff are likely to work directly with children, and many will have additional responsibility as room leaders and some will lead and manage an entire childcare setting.

The department holds national data on level 3 staff in the early years sector. We know excellent progress has been made over the past few years in which qualification levels have continued to rise. Between 2008 and 2013, the proportion of the 233,200 full day care staff with at least a level 3 qualification grew from 75% to 87%[1]. We are continuing to collect data on level 3 staff through the Childcare and Early Years Providers Survey this year, and will collect data from 2016 in the Early Years Census.

We have been talking to childcare employers and training organisations about early years qualifications. We want to continue to work with the sector to understand the challenges faced, and find ways to tackle these whilst ensuring a quality workforce remains.

[1] Childcare and Early Years Providers Survey 2013

The following table provides the full-time equivalent and head count number of workforce staff in service in local authority maintained nursery schools in Burnley parliamentary constituency, Lancashire local authority, North West region and England, November 2014. The figures are from the school workforce census and are the latest available.

[1] Excludes occasional teachers and third party support staff.

According to data from EduBase[1], there are eight local authority maintained nurseries in the Burnley constituency, 24 in Lancashire local authority, and 70 in the North West.

Local authority maintained nurseries are nurseries run by local authorities which are stand-alone and not attached to a primary school. There is therefore more nursery provision in these areas than these figures show; for example, nursery classes in schools and private nurseries.

[1] EduBase as at 9^th February 2016. Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/schools-in-england