Pat McFadden Labour MP for Wolverhampton South East Pat McFadden MP for Wolverhampton South East
Last week, I joined Wolverhampton’s Cabinet Member for Education Lynne Moran, along with many nursery schools from Wolverhampton and across the country in Parliament.
We attended the nursery school funding lobby where we were calling on the Government to guarantee sustainable future funding for maintained nursery schools.
Although, there has been a recent announcement of funding for nursery schools, this is not guaranteed beyond the next academic year. This leaves many nursery schools unable to plan for the future.
When it comes to the cycle of disadvantage and lack of opportunity, inequality sets in early. We already know there is a development gap which is variously measured at twelve or fifteen months between children from the lowest income backgrounds and those who are better off when it comes to starting school.
And we know if that development gap is not addressed early it can affect people for the rest of their lives, holding them back from learning what they might learn, cutting them off from opportunities and careers that they may have had and reinforcing the inequality and lack of social mobility which is so prevalent in our country. So, if we’re to address this, we have to start in the early years and I will continue the fight for proper, sustainable funding for our nursery schools.