This Statistical First Release contains information on numbers of three and four year olds taking up early education places at maintained nursery and primary schools, private and voluntary providers and independent schools. The SFR will also include an additional table showing the take-up of free nursery education places by local authority area. In previous years we published two publications on this topic; a provisional publication in April and a final version in August. We have decided to combine these and publish one this year. This is slightly later that the April publication in previous years to ensure we have received as many returns from Local Authorities as possible