Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she plans to evaluate the effectiveness of the implementation of her Department's 30 hours of free childcare policy.

The Department demonstrated its commitment to evaluating the effectiveness of the implementation of her Department's 30 hours of free childcare policy, by undertaking an independent evaluation of its early implementation, early innovation and early rollout programmes.

The Department published the evaluation of early implementation of 30 hours of free childcare on 17 January 2017 (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/30-hours-free-childcare-early-implementation-evaluation).

We also plan to publish the evaluation of early rollout of 30 hours of free childcare in September 2017 and will take steps to implement the early leaning from this as soon as it is made available.

The Department will also continue to monitor the implementation of 30 hours free childcare through the Early Years and Schools censuses, the Childcare and Early Years Survey of Parents and the Childcare and Early Years Providers Survey to monitor the 30 hours offer from both the providers’ and parents’ perspective. These data sources have provided a very rich and detailed set of information over many years.