Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of whether recent trends in the level of funding for early years education and childcare provision has matched (a) inflation and (b) trends in the costs incurred by providers of those services.

We are planning to spend more than £3.6 billion on early education entitlements in the 2020-21 financial year. Over one million children every year are now benefitting from the government's record investment in early years entitlements.

In October 2019 we announced additional funding for our early education entitlements for the 2020-21 financial year. For the 2020-21 financial year, all local authorities have seen an increase of 8p an hour to the hourly funding rates for the 2-year-old entitlement and an increase of 8p an hour, in the vast majority of areas, for the 3- and 4-year-old entitlement. The increase in funding rates for the 3- and 4-year-old entitlements meant that more than half of authorities have seen an increase in line with inflation (GDP deflators) of their hourly funding rate in the 2020-21 financial year.

The department carries out its own regular research on the cost of delivering childcare. The 2018 provider finances report is published here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/provider-finances-evidence-from-early-years-providers.

The department is due to publish a 2019 provider finances report in the Autumn.

The provider finances reports include data on the following:

• Total cost and total income of delivering childcare.
• Variation in unit costs (an approximate measure of the average cost per child per hour for all children in the setting) and staff hourly pay.
• Patterns in parent-paid hourly fees and additional charges for parents.

The 2019 Survey of Childcare and Early Years Providers also includes information on the costs of providing childcare and is available here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/845080/SCEYP_2019_Main_Report_Nov19.pdf.