Nursery World - Truss to revisit role of children's centres

The education and childcare minister has agreed to look again at the core purpose of Sure Start children’s centres.

Elizabeth Truss was answering MPs’ questions during a one-off session of the Education Select Committee today.

Ms Truss told the committee that the role of children’s centres was to ‘provide early help.’

But MPs questioning the minister said that there was a lack of clarity around the definition of the core purpose of children’s centres and confusion about what children’s centres do.

The committee’s chair Graham Stuart MP challenged the minister, saying that according to the core purpose, children’s centres were about improving outcomes for young children, reducing inequality, and school readiness.

Ms Truss said that part of the problem had been that the inspection regime had been ‘out of step’.

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