Debate contribution: Playgroups in West Tyrone: EA Admission Allocations

Debate contribution by Mr Nick Mathison on 18 March 2025.

MLA

Mr Nick Mathison

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

18 March 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Adjournment

Heading

Playgroups in West Tyrone: EA Admission Allocations

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4860865

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I thank the Member for securing the Adjournment debate. It is focused on West Tyrone, so I will try not to take up too much time or speak about other areas, but I welcome the Member's comments at the start that it is an issue that affects every part of Northern Ireland. I am sure that, at this time of year, every Member, whichever area they represent, is being contacted by preschools that are impacted on by how the PAN policy is applied. I begin my remarks by tracking back to the independent review of education, which clearly highlighted the discrepancy between statutory and non-statutory preschool provision. Non-statutory providers — the sorts of groups that we are talking about today — are clearly disadvantaged by the current funding model and child ratios, which we are all aware of. When the Minister responds, I would like to hear him set out what he will do about the clear recommendation in the independent review on addressing the disadvantage that non-statutory providers face and whether he will take that forward. As I said, I receive a high volume of local contact on this matter. Most of the issues have been covered here already, but the impact of the policy cannot be overstated. Those excellent settings provide high-quality early years provision, yet, every year, the Department affords them no stability. They cannot plan financially for investments in their setting. Crucially, the livelihoods of the dedicated staff who choose to work in those settings and who provide high-quality early years education — it is early years education; they deliver exactly the same level and quality of provision that we find in our statutory settings — are threatened on an annual cycle, year in, year out, and that is not acceptable. It cannot be that, every February, those staff have a concern that they will get that notice: "Sorry; the PAN for your setting has been reduced, and there is no job for you". That does not paint a good picture about how we value those staff. The issue also impacts on parental confidence in the system. We have a system that relies heavily on parental choice, yet, in many communities, parents who apply to the local non-statutory setting, which may be right in the middle of the community in which they live, and to which they want to send their child, have no confidence that they will get a place, because, if the Department cuts the numbers, those places will not be available, even if parental demand is there. That often means that parents in rural areas — this is the case in my constituency, and I am sure that it is the same in West Tyrone — are asked to travel unrealistic distances to get to the next setting. I know that the Department has a policy on provision within a five-mile radius, but that often places families who rely on public transport in a scenario where there simply is no other viable option for them. A family recently contacted me about that. They were asked to make close to a one-hour bus trip to get to a setting that is technically within the five-mile radius, but, if you do not have a car, that is not always appropriate. One of the big frustrations that non-statutory settings raise repeatedly is that statutory settings — I am not trying to denigrate their provision; there are brilliant statutory settings out there, and we are really lucky to have such great provision across Northern Ireland — are being funded to provide places for non-target-age children. Our non-statutory settings struggle to understand how it can be that a statutory setting down the road is funded to bring in non-target-age children when they have to turn away parents of target-age children because of the PAN. That does not make sense to those settings, and they do not understand how it is appropriate. They also have to charge for non-target-age children, which makes their setting less desirable. There are a lot of issues that affect non-statutory settings. I want to hear clearly from the Minister today whether he will review the policy. It is easy to bash the EA, but, in many ways in this scenario, the EA is just implementing a policy that has been passed down to it from the Department, and it is a policy that does not afford a lot of discretion. On that basis, it would be good to hear from the Minister whether, given that standardisation is coming in, which is a big change in the system and is welcome, the policy on how we deal with non-statutory settings will be reviewed. There is so much inequity in the system, and it is not a level playing field for those settings. It would be good to hear the Minister's response to those points.

809 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 12:11 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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