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Nursery Vouchers

Mr. Blunkett: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what estimate she has made of the percentage of four-year-olds expected to take up a pre-school place in the first year of the national voucher scheme. [9765]

Mr. Robin Squire: The percentage of four-year-olds expected to take up a pre-school place in the first year of the national nursery education voucher scheme will depend upon a number of factors, including the number of pre-school places that satisfy parents' choice, bearing in mind their needs and those of their children.

Mr. Blunkett: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what assessment she has made of the number of four-year-olds whose parents do not speak English as a first language in each local education authority area; and how many leaflets she plans to make available for distribution to parents of

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four-year-olds in each local education authority, in languages other than English, to inform them about the nursery voucher scheme. [10148]

Mr. Squire: It is Departmental policy to make education leaflets for parents available in the nine most widely spoken languages other than English; 130,000 copies of the guide for parents on the nursery education voucher scheme have been printed in these nine languages. All parents have been given the opportunity to request this and future information on the scheme in one of the nine languages via a special multi-language order form sent with their initial mailing of the guide. The size of the print run was informed by the take-up of translated versions of leaflets in previous Departmental campaigns and it is expected that the supply will meet the demand over the first year of the scheme.

Ministerial Leave

Mr. Ian McCartney: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment (1) how many days of leave she plans to take during the Christmas adjournment;[9819]

(2) how many days leave she has taken in the Easter, Whitsun and summer adjournments; and how many days leave she took during the time in which Parliament was prorogued this year. [9818]

Mrs. Gillian Shephard: I refer the hon. Member to the reply given by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster to you today.

Claimants (Interviews)

Mr. Rooney: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what will be the format of the new intensive series of advisory interviews for claimants unemployed more than two years; what will be the procedure for referring claimants; if benefit sanctions will be imposed for non-attendance; and what will be the impact of the programme on the 1-2-1 interview programme. [10264]

Mr. Forth: The new jobfinder programme will comprise a series of intensive interviews which focus on helping people who have been unemployed for two or more years back into work. It will build on the success of the 1-2-1 programme, which will continue to help people who have been unemployed for 12 months. The Government's intention is that jobseekers reaching two years or more unemployment will be referred to the programme by the Employment Service at the relevant restart interview and that, subject to Parliament, those who fail to attend without good cause will be subject to benefit sanction under the provisions of section 19 of the Jobseekers Act 1995, and regulation 69, 73 and 75 of the Jobseeker's Allowance Regulations 1996.

National Vocational Qualifications

Mr. Bryan Davies: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment, pursuant to her answer of 12 December, Official Report, column 313, on national vocational qualifications, if she will list those national vocational qualifications which were accredited before July 1994 which (a) had not attracted full awards and (b) had attracted fewer than 100 awards. [9776]

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Mr. Paice: The information requested is contained in a number of tables, copies of which have been placed in the Library.

Pre-school Pupils

Mr. Blunkett: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment, pursuant to her answer of 25 November, Official Report, columns 24-26, what was the (a) number and (b) percentage of three and four-year-olds in (i) reception classes in primary schools and (ii) nursery schools or nursery classes in primary schools, in each local education authority and nationally in January. [9778]

Mr. Robin Squire: The available information is shown in the table:

Pupils aged three and four in maintained nursery and primary schools in England--Position as at January 1996

	Nursery schools and nursery classes within primary schools		Infant classes(22)
	Pupils	Percentage of population	Pupils	Percentage of population
Camden	1,049	25	984	23
Greenwich	3,344	50	1,103	17
Hackney	2,242	33	1,597	24
Hammersmith and Fulham	1,731	44	559	14
Islington	1,908	37	1,475	28
Kensington and Chelsea	851	27	368	12
Lambeth	2,433	31	1,056	13
Lewisham	2,753	37	1,123	15
Southwark	3,065	41	2,060	27
Tower Hamlets	3,545	61	1,547	26
Wandsworth	2,387	33	1,668	23
Westminister	1,246	32	544	14
Barking and Dagenham	2,101	46	1,543	34
Barnet	2,544	31	2,153	26
Bexley	1,533	25	2,022	33
Brent	2,600	36	2,066	29
Bromley	183	3	2,395	33
Croydon	2,148	23	2,888	31
Ealing	3,821	46	2,458	30
Enfield	1,682	22	2,417	31
Haringey	2,769	44	1,905	31
Harrow	1,029	19	1,605	29
Havering	552	10	1,943	36
Hillingdon	3,383	50	151	2
Hounslow	2,396	40	1,693	28
Kingston upon Thames	1,334	39	1,074	31
Merton	2,711	54	1,007	20
Newham	4,575	52	1,279	15
Redbridge	1,430	22	1,507	23
Richmond upon Thames	863	21	1,160	29
Sutton	1,949	40	74	2
Waltham Forest	2,817	39	1,051	15
Birmingham	11,217	35	10,029	31
Coventry	2,085	24	2,817	33
Dudley	3,270	39	2,676	32
Sandwell	4,556	53	2,912	34
Solihull	1,872	37	1,990	40
Walsall	4,388	59	2,396	32
Wolverhampton	3,912	54	2,224	31
Knowsley	2,957	63	1,673	36
Liverpool	6,160	46	4,212	32
St. Helens	1,620	33	1,600	33
Sefton	2,882	40	2,532	35
Wirral	2,251	26	2,936	34
Bolton	3,172	42	2,503	33
Bury	1,625	32	1,636	32
Manchester	7,307	53	2,432	18
Oldham	2,452	37	2,168	32
Rochdale	2,243	35	2,048	32
Salford	3,663	55	2,052	31
Stockport	2,188	29	2,505	33
Tameside	2,596	40	2,143	33
Trafford	2,640	45	1,828	31
Wigan	2,167	25	2,778	32
Barnsley	2,957	47	1,124	18
Doncaster	3,654	44	2,756	33
Rotherham	3,347	47	1,200	17
Sheffield	5,729	42	2,531	19
Bradford	6,550	44	4,263	29
Calderdale	1,945	35	1,780	32
Kirklees	4,475	41	3,472	32
Leeds	8,980	46	5,771	30
Wakefield	4,813	54	1,818	20
Gateshead	1,926	37	1,686	33
Newcastle upon Tyne	2,799	38	2,250	31
North Tyneside	2,671	55	1,671	34
South Tyneside	2,226	55	1,373	34
Sunderland	3,678	44	2,628	32
Avon	5,267	21	7,782	31
Bedfordshire	5,254	32	2,972	18
Berkshire	6,987	32	922	4
Buckinghamshire	3,342	18	3,022	16
Cambridge	2,254	12	5,854	31
Cheshire	5,569	22	8,551	33
Cleveland	10,017	63	5,324	34
Cornwall	1,689	15	3,584	32
Cumbria	3,470	28	4,120	33
Derbyshire	9,815	39	5,971	24
Devon	3,153	13	4,066	16
Dorset	800	5	4,875	33
Durham	7,325	47	5,235	33
East Sussex	1,963	12	5,247	32
Essex	3,389	8	9,400	23
Gloucestershire	22	0	4,388	31
Hampshire	2,021	5	13,311	32
Hereford and Worcester	2,179	12	2,877	16
Hertfordshire	9,900	36	5,481	20
Humberside	9,369	39	5,769	24
Isle of Wight	170	6	960	36
Kent	2,467	6	13,260	33
Lancashire	8,163	21	12,617	33
Leicestershire	5,090	20	4,924	20
Lincolnshire	2,349	16	4,880	34
Norfolk	1,409	8	5,491	30
North Yorkshire	3,928	22	5,198	30
Northamptonshire	3,332	20	5,491	32
Northumberland	3,112	43	2,496	34
Nottinghamshire	14,125	51	2,152	8
Oxfordshire	3,377	20	1,231	7
Shropshire	2,325	21	2,083	19
Somerset	607	5	3,873	33
Staffordshire	7,336	27	9,075	33
Suffolk	3,306	19	2,606	15
Surrey	3,238	12	7,486	29
Warwickshire	2,108	17	4,178	34
West Sussex	1,281	8	2,941	17
Wiltshire	792	5	3,630	23
England	364,271	28	344,222	26

(22) Includes reception and other classes.

(23) Includes Isles of Scilly.

(24) Includes Corporation of London.

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