Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she has taken to improve access to early years childcare support.

Through our Best Start in Life strategy we are focused on reforming the childcare system to increase affordability, accessibility and improve the quality of early education and care that families receive.

In 2026/27, we expect to provide over £9.5 billion for the early years entitlements, more than doubling annual public investment in the early years sector compared to 2023/24, as we have successfully rolled-out the expansion of government-funded childcare for working parents. 30 hours per week of government funded childcare will save families using their full entitlement up to £8,000 per eligible child per year. We are increasing Early Years Pupil Premium rate by 15% to £1.15 per hour in 2026/27, equivalent to up to £655 per eligible child per year. This gives additional funding to providers to invest in evidence-informed approaches to supporting children from low-income families.

The department has regular contact with all local authorities in England about their sufficiency of childcare and any issues they are facing. To date, no local authorities have reported any sufficiency issues.

We have announced over £400 million of funding to create tens of thousands of places in new and expanded school-based nurseries to help ensure more children can access the quality early education where it is needed and get the best start in life. The first phase of the programme is creating up to 6,000 new nursery places, with schools reporting over 5,000 have been made available from September 2025.