To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how many nursery nurses per head of population there were in Northamptonshire in each of the last 10 years. (293488)

These data are not available. However, national data on the numbers and characteristics of staff in the child care and early years work force are collected through the Childcare and Early Years Providers Survey. The latest survey to be published in the series is for 2008 and was published at the end of September 2009. This can be found at the following website address:

http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/research/programmeofresearch/projectinformation.cfm?projectld=14590&type=5&resultspage=1

To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how many nursery places per head of population there were in Northamptonshire in each of the last 10 years. (293489)

The Department publishes information on the part-time equivalent number of free early education places filled by three and four-year-olds in maintained, private, voluntary and independent providers. This is derived by counting children taking up 12 and a half hours per week as one place, 10 hours per week as 0.8 places, seven and a half hours per week as 0.6 places, five hours per week as 0.4 places and two and a half hours per week as 0.2 places. Table 1 shows the number of part-time equivalent places filled by three and four-year-olds in Northamptonshire local authority from 2000 to 2009.

Information on nursery school places per head of population has not been included. This is because data on places available are not collected; only data on places filled are available and as children can access their free entitlement across different local authority areas, part time equivalent places are not on a comparable basis with the local authority population figures. Population figures at this level of disaggregation are also not as reliable as at the national level.