Children: Day Care

(asked on 21st September 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the findings of the survey of 20,000 parents by Mumsnet with 13 other groups, published in September 2021, what recent assessment he has made of the impact of the cost of childcare on (a) household bills and (b) the career choices of parents.


Answered by
Will Quince Portrait
Will Quince
This question was answered on 29th September 2021

The department welcomes the contribution that Mumsnet and their partner organisations have made around this topic. However, it is important to note that this survey is unweighted, and the sample size represents a small proportion of all parents with a child or children in the early years.

Ipsos MORI conducted wave 9 of our parent poll, ‘Childcare use, perceived impact on child development, information on working from home, and awareness and use of free entitlements for families of 0-4 year-olds during COVID-19’ in July 2021, with a smaller but representative sample of 1,000 parents of children aged 0-4 in England. This is available at: https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/childcare-use-perceived-impact-child-development-information-working-home-and-awareness-and-use.

The data has been weighted to match the population profile of parents of children aged 0-4 in England by region, social grade, and the age of the selected child.

The Parent Poll asked different questions to the Mumsnet survey but key points from the findings include:

  • The affordability of weekly childcare costs is unchanged for just over half of parents compared to before the COVID-19 outbreak, and for 3 in 10 parents their weekly childcare costs are now easier to meet.
  • The majority of parents (91%) who used formal childcare before the COVID-19 outbreak, and are currently using it, say that their child is spending about the same number of hours or more in formal childcare as they did before.
  • More than half (56%) of parents report that their child is currently using formal childcare, this increases to 94% when looking at just those children who were receiving formal childcare before the COVID-19 outbreak.
  • Only 6% of parents whose child was not receiving formal childcare said they would like to use formal childcare but have not been able to find a suitable provider. This is only approximately 2% of all parents.
  • Nearly two thirds of parents of 0-4 year olds currently using childcare (64%) agree that the hours their child(ren) can access formal or informal childcare/school fits with the working hours of the adults in the household.
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