The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Claire Coutinho)
From 4 July 2022 to 16 September 2022, the Department for Education (DFE) consulted on the following proposed amendments to the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) statutory framework:
a change to the current statutory minimum staff to child ratios in England for two-year-olds from 1:4 to 1:5;
clarifying that childminders can care for more than the currently-specified maximum of three young children, when caring for siblings of children they already care for, or when caring for their own child; and
clarifying that “adequate supervision” while children are eating means that children must be within sight and hearing of an adult—rather than the current wording of “sight or hearing”.
Alongside the consultation, the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) and Frontier Economics—commissioned by DFE—conducted a study with early years providers to assess the impact of the proposed changes.
In the Government response to the consultation, published in March 2023. we announced that we would be proceeding with the proposed changes to ratios, childminder flexibilities and supervision while eating.
Today, 12 July 2023, we have laid a Statutory Instrument (SI) in both Houses to amend the Early Years Foundation Stage statutory framework (EYFS) to make the changes referenced above. These changes will come into force from 4 September 2023.
The updated version of the EYFS—which will apply from 4 September 2023—is available on www.gov.uk, alongside the current version of the EYFS—which still applies until 4 September 2023.
A full impact assessment has been prepared for these regulations. It is annexed to the explanatory memorandum, which is available alongside the SI on the OPSI website https://www.legislation.gov.uk.
In the written ministerial statement published on 7 July we also announced additional funding to uplift the rates for the existing entitlements from September 2023. We will be investing £204 million of additional funding in 2023-24 and £288 million in 2024-25. For 2023-24, this means we will effectively increase the funding rates that local authorities receive by an average of 32% for the current two-year-old entitlement, and by an average of 6.3% for three and four-year-old entitlements, compared to their current 2023-24 rates. Further detail can be found in that statement.
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