Nurseries: Fees and Charges

(asked on 21st July 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will make a comparative assessment of average nursery costs as a proportion of income after benefits in the (a) UK and (b) OECD; and what assessment he has made of the reasons for that difference.


Answered by
Brendan Clarke-Smith Portrait
Brendan Clarke-Smith
This question was answered on 5th September 2022

The department has invested more than £3.5 billion in each of the last three years to deliver our early education entitlements, and continues to help families with their childcare bills through Tax-Free Childcare and Universal Credit.

The information requested is not held by the department but has been published previously by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The OECD publishes data on childcare as a percentage of average household income. This shows that in 2020, two parents both earning an average salary with two children, spent 19% of their net household income on childcare, compared to the OECD total of 9%. Reasons for differences in childcare costs between different countries can include differences in enrolment rates, types of government childcare support offered, how much time a child spends in childcare, staff-to-child ratios, qualification levels of staff, and differences in starting ages. This information is available on the OECD website and can be accessed here: https://stats.oecd.org/viewhtml.aspx?datasetcode=NCC&lang=en.

The department continues to explore what more can be done to help parents access childcare which suits their lives, including out of hours or before or after school childcare. We are committed to working together across government to make our current suite of offers work as effectively as possible and ensure it delivers for those parents who need it.

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