A new resource on the Department for Education’s website means that nurseries, parents and others will be able to see a breakdown by local authority area of funding for three-and four-year-old places, as well as their take-up.
Although the data has been previously available from Section 251 returns, which local authorities have to submit annually to show how they spend education funding, this is the first time the data has been pulled together into an easily accessible format.
Nurseries will be able to view how much funding per child per year is allocated to the free entitlement for three- and four-year old places by type of provider and area. The data will also be updated in the next few months to include information on two-year-old places.
The information is split into four areas that can then be viewed in more detail:
- Funding
- Quality
- Take-up
- Child development
The Foundation Years benchmarking tool provides an overview of figures, but also enables users to pull together local authority budget data from the Excel spreadsheets to create their own tables and charts.
The funding spreadsheet shows the levels of spending on free early education for each local authority, broken down into a percentage of the Dedicated Schools Grant and by sector, so that private and voluntary nurseries will be able to compare their funding with nursery schools and primary schools.
It also allows comparisons with how well children are doing in their development at the age of five throughout England.
The child development spreadsheet shows how many children in each local authority area are achieving a good level of development using EYFS profile statistics.
It shows the levels of development of children from the most deprived areas, and children achieving the least, in comparison to other children in each local authority.
Information is shown for the last three years.
The quality spreadsheet shows the percentage of providers in a local authority rated good or outstanding at their last inspection.
The National Day Nurseries Association, which has been calling for more transparency over levels of funding, said that it would give nurseries easier access to information, which will enable them to question local authorities about funding issues.
Claire Schofield, director of policy, membership and communications, urged nurseries to use the tool.
‘We’re very pleased that the DfE has produced this. It means that nurseries can have conversations with their local authority about their levels of funding. There may be valid reasons for why their funding is different from other areas, but this means they can go and ask why.’
Ms Schofield added that as part of school funding reforms, from 2013 local authorities will receive an early years block of funding within the Dedicated Schools Grant.
Although funding for early years is not ringfenced within the DSG, the bnchmarking tool will also enable providers to challenge those local authorities who underspend their early years block.
‘You can easily see the local authorities that spend the biggest and the least. There’s a really strong argument to be made. Clearly local authorities are struggling to get a return on their budgets, but if you invest in early years and early intervention then children will be in a much better place when they start school, and local authorities will be saving money later. We’re urging nurseries to look at this.’
She added that it was nurseries could also share it with parents, to help them understand issues around funding for the free entitlement and sustainability.
The launch of the resource follows calls for greater transparency over early years funding, both from teh early years sector and recent reports by the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee.
HOW TO USE THE FOUNDATION YEARS BENCHMARKING TOOL
For a general overview on the tool go to the page on the DfE website
Here you can download a guide.
You can then choose either the funding, take-up or child development spreadsheet for comparisons with other local authority areas.
Note that when you try to open the speadsheets in Excel you may need to change your security settings to low to access each spreadsheet. To do this go to the Menu bar, select 'Tools' - 'Macro' - 'Security', and change to 'low'. Then save the spreadsheets on your own computer. You can then re-set your security settings.
