Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that rural areas are not disproportionately impacted by the rollout of the expanded childcare offer, in the context of levels of (a) job availability and (b) childcare capacity in rural areas.

The department is working closely with all local authorities on the rollout of the expanded childcare offer. The department has regular contact with each local authority in England about their sufficiency of childcare and any issues they are facing, including impacts to rural areas. Where local authorities report sufficiency challenges, we support the local authority, where needed, through our childcare sufficiency support contract.

To support delivery of the expansion, our national recruitment campaign urges the public to ‘Do something BIG’ and consider working in nurseries or pre-schools, as a childminder, or in wraparound care roles. On average, the campaign website receives over 37,000 visits weekly, which directs potential applicants to the Department for Work and Pension’s ‘Find a Job’ vacancy platform to search for early years roles.

To address childcare capacity, schools could apply for up to £150,000 of capital funding in autumn 2024 to create or expand a school-based nursery, creating up to 6,000 places with most available from September 2025. This is the first stage in a long-term commitment to expand school-based nurseries across England.

The latest data shows there are over 5,800 more providers delivering childcare entitlements than last year, the first increase in five years, and the biggest increase since data became available in 2018. This comes alongside an 18,000 increase in the number of staff delivering the entitlements in private, voluntary and independent nurseries. This is backed by significant government investment totalling over £8 billion for early years entitlements in 2025/26.