§ Mr. Rookerasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what new advice he has given to local education authorities since 1st January 1976 regarding the admission to school of under-fives.
§ Miss Joan LestorA joint circular dated 31st December 1975—DES No. 15/75—gave details of the rate support grant settlement for 1976–77 together with advice to authorities about the implications of the settlement for their services. This included an account of national priorities in the field of education offered to guide authorities in reach-470W ing their decisions on the policies appropriate to their own situation. In giving such guidance the circular acknowledged the concern of local authority representatives that it should not prevent local authorities from exercising their own responsibility for deciding on priorities for expenditure in their own areas and selecting the best means for keeping expenditure within the required national total. The following paragraph referred to under-fives:
Local education authorites should be able to admit children of 3 and 4 years of age, normally for part-day attendance, up to the limit of the capacity of their purpose-built or adapted nursery schools, or designated nursery classes at primary schools. Children in these age-groups apart from the rising fives should not in general be admitted to ordinary classes in infant schools. Rising-fives—that is, children who, if admitted, would be in school for a term before they were legally required to receive full-time education—may at an authority's discretion be admitted to what would otherwise be vacant places in ordinary first-year infant classes provided the call on resources is only marginal.