Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the level of expansion of the childcare sector workforce necessary to implement the expansion of childcare provision as announced in the Spring Budget on 15 March.

The department regularly survey a representative sample of over 10,000 childcare providers to gain insights into how they run their provision and the challenges that they face. This includes data on the workforce. This survey can be found at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/childcare-and-early-years-provider-survey/2022. The department also regularly survey over 6,000 parents to understand their usage of childcare, which can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/childcare-and-early-years-survey-of-parents-2021.

This data was used to inform our methodology and the uplift required to meet the pressures that providers face, and to evaluate the impact this will have on early years settings, early years staff and the sufficiency of childcare. The department is planning to share further details in due course.