To ask the Minister of Education whether he will amend the Education Authority’s Pupil Allocation Number policy following the call from 46 pre-school leaders to reform the allocations. [R]

The Education Authority (EA) is responsible for managing the pre-school admissions process and ensuring that sufficient places are available to accommodate all target age children whose parents want a place. In doing so, the EA takes account of all provision across statutory and non-statutory settings. My Department plays no role in this process.

The admissions process is still ongoing, but already 98.8% children have been offered a place in a setting of their parents’ preference, and 92.4% offered their first preference setting.

I appreciate that settings are naturally keen to attract as many funded places as possible given the continuing decline in the birth rate and this must be managed fairly by the EA. The EA advises that, of the 46 settings referred to, only 25 were oversubscribed with applications at stage one of the admissions process for the 2026/27 academic year. Only 22 have requested at least one PAN increase, ten of which have had their requests wholly or partially approved. 11 settings have not had their requests approved, including three that were not oversubscribed and one that only received one first preference application at stage one.

The PAN review carried out by the EA at my request last year included a range of measures to improve the process in both the short and longer term, many of which have already been implemented. Details of this are available on the EA website.

I believe that there may be scope to further improve the manner in which the EA takes account of the preferences of parents, while still balancing its relevant statutory duties. The PAN review includes an action to consider alternative PAN allocation models which will enable a range of options to be fully explored with stakeholders and thoroughly tested to ensure effectiveness before any changes are made.

My officials are supporting the EA in carrying out initial modelling to inform stakeholder workshops to discuss alternative PAN allocation models. This work is at an early stage but it is intended that the first workshop will be held before the end of this academic year.