Funding pressures result in closure of Parade Community Preschool

The Parade Community Preschool will close its doors due to national funding pressures, leaving families and pupils in Hilsea “devastated.”

- by Toby Paine

Manager and founder Cathy Robinson said the decision was the result of insufficient funding.

“The early years system is completely broken, there’s not enough money,” she said.

She explained that the nursery education funding rate the school receives per hour no longer matches the new national minimum wage, which increased in April.

Robinson described the recent expansion of free childcare, giving working parents 30 hours a week of state-funded provision during term time, as “the last nail in the coffin”.

She said this, combined with rising costs, had added to financial pressures stretching back to the pandemic.