Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans she has to undertake an assessment of the effect of 30 hours of free childcare on the availability of funded two-year-old places after that roll-out has concluded.

Local authorities have a statutory duty to secure free early education places for two-year-olds who meet the eligibility criteria. In 2016, we invested £100m of capital funding to expand place capacity for 30 hours by creating nearly 18,000 additional places.

In July 2017, the Department for Education published the Evaluation of Early Implementation of 30 Hours Free Childcare: Research report. It concluded that there was no indication of adverse effects on other free entitlement provision from the implementation of 30 hours in those areas.

We will closely monitor the impact of the 30 hours policy, working with our delivery contractor ‘Childcare Works’. We publish data annually on take up of free places by two, three and four-year-olds, and carry out regular voluntary surveys of local authorities. Overall, the proportion of two-year-olds benefitting from funded early education in England continues to rise, from 58% in 2015 to 71% in 2017. The proportion of two-year-olds benefitting from funded early education places by local authority is set out in Table 5LA of the Statistical First Release (SFR) Education provision: children under 5 years of age, January 2017 at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/education-provision-children-under-5-years-of-age-january-2017.