Birmingham’s nursery schools are helping struggling families get enough to eat, secure a decent home and find jobs.

And children from low-income homes are being provided with meals and clothes.

The huge contribution that nursery schools make to the city is revealed as nursery heads launch a campaign for funding to secure their future.

They are urging Chancellor Philip Hammond to ensure that money is available to prevent schools closing, when he launches the Government’s long-awaited Spending Review later this year.

The Birmingham-based Centre for Research in Early Childhood has published a report looking at the role nursery schools play, based partly on evidence provided by the 27 council-funded nurseries in the city.

It found children are benefiting from nursery schools “ensuring their basic needs were being met, including food, clothes, housing, safety and refuge from threatening and violent home environments.”

And the schools are also providing vital help to struggling parents.

“We can also identify clear benefits that go well beyond the normal expectations of an early educational place by enhancing the quality of family life, supporting parents into training and employment, improving the children’s home learning environment, increasing parenting skills and enhancing family wellbeing.

“These benefits include social and emotional support and counselling for parents, respite for family from care responsibilities, increased social inclusion and reduction in isolation, access to parenting support and information."

Cuts to other services had meant nursery schools stepped into the breach to provide essential help.

“Starkly and remarkably, in the absence of other services, in some cases severe and life threatening conditions were also mitigated through the Nursery’s action, such as lack of food, provision of housing, removal from domestic violence, treatment for drug and substance abuse and protection from human trafficking.”

A child at nursery pre-school
A child at nursery pre-school

In one example, a child was provided with a uniform and school bag at the start of the school year.

The nursery school head told researchers: “We provided breakfast and food throughout the session.

“[The child] attended breakfast club for free and stayed for a lunch.

“Sometimes mum came to us when she had no money for gas or electric.”

The nursery school also helped the mother in talks with the council about the poor housing she was living in.

According to the report, nursery schools in Birmingham are currently under-funded by up to £16 million - but they get by partly because staff work extra hours for free.

It said: “This contribution is made through cost efficiencies, unpaid hours, practitioner goodwill and professional generosity.”

The authors of the study are Professor Christine Pascal OBE and Professor Tony Bertram.

Nursery heads from across Europe are to meet in Birmingham to back a campaign for better funding of nursery education.

Heads fear that nursery schools may be forced to close unless the Government provides a permanent increase in funding.

The Government has responded in the past to concerns raised by nursery heads by announcing £57.28m in extra funding for nursery schools nationally in the 2019-20 academic year, including £4.5m for those in Birmingham.

But there is no guarantee this funding will continue.

Heads want the Government to confirm that they will be funded in the long term.

And the report warns that even with the money they currently have, the schools “remain under severe pressure due to budget cuts and the impact of wider austerity measures which have reduced wider services for families and young children within and beyond schools”, according to the research.