The key role played in education by the schooling of under-5s has received growing recognition in recent years.

When early years funding was overhauled in April, maintained nursery schools were protected, because of the “important contribution these schools make to the social mobility of young children in disadvantaged areas”.

But despite such positive words from the government, the wider school funding squeeze is putting a significant section of early years education at risk. Some are even warning of “mass closures”.

Nursery schools may be safe, at least for the next two years of additional funding. But no such protection has been given to school nursery classes, which educate 286,840 three- and four-year-olds.

Concerns are growing that schools will have to reduce teacher numbers for these classes. The result could be that maintained schools have to convert nursery classes to voluntary-run pre-schools - or close them altogether. And school leaders are angry at the prospect.

“I don’t think we would be having this discussion about removing Year 6 teachers,” says Amanda King, executive head of Bedworth Heath and Atherstone nursery schools in Warwickshire. “People think, ‘Oh, it’s nursery. It doesn’t matter.’ But if you get it right in early years, then you get it right from the very beginning. There would be uproar if we were taking teachers out of Year 6.

“You are undermining the fabric of what is a school, so what do you do then? Do you say we don’t need a teacher in Reception? We don’t need a teacher in Year 1?”

Pre-school conversions

The Conservative manifesto promised that all new primary schools would include a nursery. However, it did not mention what some argue is the crucial question of whether this provision would be teacher-led.

Schools must employ a teacher in nursery classes, but it is possible for a school to oversee a private or voluntary pre-school setting that does not have to employ teachers. And that appears to be a strategy increasingly used by cash-strapped schools.

Cambridgeshire Council has recently consulted on converting the nursery class at Shirley Community Nursery and Primary School in Cambridge to a school-run pre-school. Low numbers have made the nursery class unviable. But the conversion to a pre-school would allow hours to become more flexible, which could encourage more parents to use it.

Changes to early years funding, introduced in April as part of plans to offer working parents 30 hours a week of free childcare, are seen as being a key factor in schools’ problems over nursery provision. The government wanted to reduce the variation between different areas in how early years education was funded and introduce a universal base rate for providers. It says that it has given authorities enough to pay providers at least £4 per hour.

But the authorities disagree. They say that the move to level the playing field has meant that, in some areas, budgets for school nursery classes have been slashed.

In Birmingham, council officers have said nursery classes in schools are at “significant risk”. Schools in the city face a drop in funding of between £17,000 and £20,000 per class.

In south-east London, a Lewisham Council report has highlighted similar problems and warned of the need to support schools over “the sustainability of their nursery classes”. “There have already been a couple of school nursery classes that have closed and there are more who have challenges with their sustainability,” it says.

Poole Borough Council is warning that schools in its area could see funding cut by £171, or 7 per cent, per child by 2019.

Warwickshire County Council is also among the authorities that received less funding overall and has decided that nursery classes, which had previously been funded at £4.13 per hour, will now get £3.77 per hour. A spokesman for the authority says it has allocated the maximum amount of government grant.

King agrees that it needs more central funding. “The ministers talk about the minimum rate being £4.30 an hour,” she says. “But in reality, if you have a child who doesn’t pick up any supplements, they get £3.77 an hour.

“As a teaching school, we have a moral responsibility and a strong wish to ensure quality provision for every child. You can’t buy a couple of coffees for £3.77, but it seems perfectly acceptable to fund an early education place at that rate.”

Feeling the squeeze

In 2015, the NAHT heads’ union surveyed members and found that about half of school nursery classes did not receive enough funding. Four-fifths of the classes were subsidised by their school’s main budget. Others charged parents or raised funds in other ways.

Now, as the squeeze on main school budgets tightens, those within-school subsidies are under threat, as are the high-quality teacher-led nursery classes they support.

“Was it assumed that nursery classes would receive a subsidy from the rest of the school?” asks Beatrice Merrick, chief executive of the Early Education charity.

“That should have been subject to scrutiny because we are potentially in a situation where we lose nursery classes - which have been shown to be high quality - from the most deprived areas because the wrong decision was made.

“It is alarming. The combination of the new school funding formula and the early years funding formula means we will see mass closures, as the two come on stream.”

James Bowen, director of the NAHT Edge middle leaders’ union, says: “Heads are desperate to hang on to nurseries and invest in the future. But as school budgets come increasingly under pressure, heads are not going to have money to cross-subsidise.”

A Department for Education spokesperson says: “The government is investing an additional £1 billion per year in the free early years entitlements by 2019-20, including over £300 million per year to raise the hourly average funding rate.

“This investment, and the introduction of an early years national funding formula, will see the hourly rates in 80 per cent of local authorities increasing.

“Our cost-of-childcare review found that costs are broadly similar between the main types of early years providers, including primary schools with nursery provision.”