To ask the Minister of Education to provide his response to the independent review of education recommendation that current arrangements relating to funding, staff ratios and qualifications in public sector preschool education provision should be applied to private sector provision as soon as possible.

In 2022 my Department commissioned a scoping study to analyse the current state of the pre-school education sector and cost a range of options for standardisation of funded pre-school education provision, including options relating to these issues. The report was circulated to Executive colleagues and is available on the Department’s website at Final Scoping Study Report | Department of Education (education-ni.gov.uk).

Implementation of the options contained within the report is dependent on the necessary resources being made available to my Department.