Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the article entitled UK free childcare funding woes forcing some providers out of business, published by the Financial Times on 28 April 2018, what assessment his Department has made of the accuracy of reports that the 30 hours’ free childcare for working parents of three and four year olds is underfunded; and what assessment he has made of the effect of the level of Government funding provided for that childcare on the fees charged by providers to parents of younger children.

We will be spending around £6 billion on childcare support in 2019-20 - a record amount. That will include funding for our early education entitlements, on which we plan to spend around £3.5 billion this year alone.

Local authorities receive funding from central government for delivering the free early years entitlements to 3 and 4 year olds through the dedicated schools grant. Our provisional allocations to local authorities for 2018-19 can be found here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dedicated-schools-grant-dsg-2018-to-2019.

Local authorities are responsible for setting the funding rates for their early years providers in consultation with their schools forum. Data from local authority planned expenditure for 2018-19 is publicly available. The data, as reported by local authorities, is available at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/planned-la-and-school-expenditure-2018-to-2019-financial-year.

The government recognises the need to keep the evidence base on costs and charges up to date. The mean hourly fee charged by providers in England in Spring 2018 was estimated to be £5.02 for children under age 2, £5.01 for children aged 2 and £4.92 for 3 and 4 year old preschool children. Details can be found at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/childcare-and-early-years-providers-survey-2018.

We continue to monitor the provider market closely through a range of regular and one-off research projects which provide insight into various aspects of the provider market.