Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the Institute for Public Policy Research report entitled Delivering a Childcare Guarantee, published on 6 December 2022, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of that report's recommendations.

The report “Delivering a Childcare Guarantee” makes several recommendations that cover sustainable funding for childcare and early education, the sufficiency of the number of childcare places on offer to parents, and our investment in the early years workforce. Getting this right is fundamentally important for parents and children, and we are looking at all options to improve the cost, flexibility and availability of childcare, and crucially, outcomes for children.

The department has spent over £3.5 billion in each of the past three years on early education entitlements to support families with the cost of childcare. At the Spending Review 2021, we announced additional funding for the early years entitlements of £160 million in 2022/23, £180 million in 2023/24 and £170 million in 2024/25, compared to the 2021/22 financial year. For 2023/24, we are investing an additional £20 million, on top of the additional £180 million already announced, to help support providers at a national level with additional costs associated with the national living wage.

The department is not currently planning to extend our free early education entitlements. We remain committed to supporting working parents through a range of childcare offers, including Universal Credit and Tax-Free Childcare, which are available to working parents of children from age 0.

The department is supporting parents to access the childcare they need through the ‘right to request’, which enables a parent to request that the school their child attends considers establishing wraparound and/or holiday childcare provision, if they are not already doing so. Schools must respond to these requests and should not refuse them without a reasonable justification. The government is also investing up to £30 million to continue our national school breakfast programme until July 2024, supporting up to 2,500 schools in disadvantaged areas. The programme offers free nutritious breakfasts to children from low-income families, to support their attainment, wellbeing, and readiness to learn.

Under Section 6 of the Childcare Act 2006, local authorities are responsible for ensuring that the provision of childcare is sufficient to meet the requirements of parents in their area. The department has regular contact with each local authority in England, and if a local authority raises concerns about sufficiency issues we will, of course, support it with any specific requirements. We are currently seeking to procure a contract that will provide support to local authorities who are seeking to improve their ability to fulfil their childcare sufficiency duties.

Finally, we recognise that workforce recruitment and retention are key issues for the early years sector. The majority of the sector is made up of private, voluntary and independent organisations who set their own rates of pay. However, we acknowledge the concerns raised by the sector regarding the perceived impact of salary rates. The department is working with the sector to build our understanding of the workforce situation, and how we might support providers in this area.

The government is already providing a package of training, qualifications, expert guidance, and targeted support for the early years sector to focus on the development of the youngest and most disadvantaged children and help to address existing recruitment and retention challenges. We are funding a range of programmes, including additional funding for graduate level specialist training which leads to early years teacher status and an accredited level 3 early years SENCO qualification.

Childminders are an important part of the early years workforce and the childcare market more widely, providing flexible, high-quality and affordable childcare that many parents both want and need. We have announced a set of measures to support childminders and boost their numbers. More information about this will be provided in due course.