Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, for what reason eligibility codes for 30 hours of free childcare have not been validated after parents have received them.

We would not expect all of the 30 hours codes generated by the childcare service to be validated.[1]

The system generates codes for younger children who will become eligible in the spring term. This is to give parents ample time to reserve their childcare place. These parents may not yet have taken their code to their provider to be validated.

The system also generates codes for 4- and 5-year old children, as some parents may wish to defer entry to school and use a 30 hours code in a private, voluntary or independent provider. However, the vast majority of 4- and 5-year-old children will be in state-funded reception places and will not need to use the 30 hours code.

We would expect the number of codes validated to continue to increase as term-time providers have reopened after the summer.

[1] The childcare service is a joint application system for Tax-Free Childcare and 30 hours free childcare. 30 hours codes are generated for all successful applications for children within the following age range: 2 years and 36 weeks to 5 years and 22 weeks.