Asked by: Freddie van Mierlo (Liberal Democrat - Henley and Thame)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department has conducted a review of the consistency of early years funding implementation across local authorities in England.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department will review early years funding, including the early years national funding formulae, consulting on a set of changes by summer 2026. We will review how funding is distributed both nationally and locally to ensure the funding system is fair and effective at reflecting the costs of delivery and appropriately targeting additional need.
Asked by: Freddie van Mierlo (Liberal Democrat - Henley and Thame)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of allocating SEND funding to schools on the basis of their current cohort of pupils rather than the cohort in a previous academic year.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
The schools national funding formula (NFF) operates on a lag, where schools are funded based on their pupils in the previous October census. This helps to give schools more certainty over funding levels, to aid their planning, and is particularly important in giving schools that see year-on-year reductions in their pupil numbers time to re-organise their staffing and costs before seeing the funding impact.
Schools are expected to meet from their core funding the additional support costs of pupils with special educational needs and disabilities up to £6,000 per pupil per annum. When those support costs exceed £6,000, the authority should also allocate additional top-up funding to cover the excess costs. This funding comes from the authority’s high needs budget, and is based on the needs of current pupils.
Asked by: Freddie van Mierlo (Liberal Democrat - Henley and Thame)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that early years providers are not disadvantaged by restrictions on charging flexibility for funded childcare hours.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
It is this government’s ambition that all families have access to high-quality, affordable and flexible early education and care, giving every child the best start in life and delivering on our Plan for Change.
Government funding for the entitlements does not cover consumables like meals, nappies or sun cream or additional activities, such as trips, so providers are able to ask parents to pay for these things.
However, in line with a recent high court judgment, these charges must not be mandatory or a condition of accessing a funded place. The high court judgement is accessible here: https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewhc/admin/2025/224. The government’s guidance sets out requirements for the delivery of the early education and childcare entitlements in line with the law.
The statutory guidance emphasises transparency at the heart of how the entitlement should be passed on to parents, including that any costs should be clearer on invoices and websites. Providers have until January 2026 to update their information in line with transparency requirements.
Asked by: Freddie van Mierlo (Liberal Democrat - Henley and Thame)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to increase workforce numbers in the early years sector.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The early years workforce is at the heart of the government’s mission to give every child the best start in life and deliver the Plan for Change.
The department is supporting the sector to attract talented staff and childminders to join the workforce by creating conditions for improved recruitment. Our national recruitment campaign is urging the public to ‘Do Something BIG’ and start a career working with small children. A dedicated website is helping people to find out more about gaining qualifications and to search for existing job vacancies. To further boost recruitment in early years, we are continuing to offer £1,000 financial incentives.
We are creating new routes into the workforce through skills bootcamps for the early years which lead to an accelerated apprenticeship, and also funding early years initial teacher training as a route for new and existing staff to gain early years teacher status. Our commitment to grow the early years skills pipeline can also be seen through the expansion of the Levelling Up Premium payments. To support childminders to join and stay in the profession we have implemented new flexibilities to work with more people and spend more time working from non-domestic premises.
Asked by: Freddie van Mierlo (Liberal Democrat - Henley and Thame)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to simplify early years funding for parents and guardians.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
It is our ambition that all families have access to high-quality, affordable and flexible early education and care, improving opportunity for every child and work choices for every parent. This is key to the government’s Plan for Change, which starts with reaching the milestone of a record number of children being ready for school.
The department is expanding the childcare entitlements so that from September 2025, eligible working parents can access 30 hours of early education and childcare a week, over 38 weeks of the year, from the term after their child turns 9 months until they start school.
Parents can find information on early education entitlements and other childcare offers at www.childcarechoices.gov.uk.
On Monday 7 July, the department published its strategy to give every child the Best Start in Life. We will look across the early education and childcare support provided by different parts of government to identify ways to make it simpler for providers and parents, improve access and increase the overall impact of government spending on children and families. We will look at how to improve outcomes for children from low-income families and at the requirements on households to access different childcare entitlements.
Asked by: Freddie van Mierlo (Liberal Democrat - Henley and Thame)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she plans to revise the funding formula used to allocate the dedicated schools grant in areas which have a high cost of living but low area cost adjustment.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
The department uses the schools national funding formula (NFF) to distribute core funding for 5 to 16 year-old pupils (reception through to year 11) in mainstream state-funded schools in England.
The area cost adjustment (ACA) means that funding allocations to schools are adjusted to reflect the geographic costs they face. Importantly, because the department uses the hybrid methodology, schools’ funding allocations reflect differences in both general labour market costs and teacher salaries.
The ACA takes into account the four geographical pay bands for teachers, as well as regional variations in the labour market for non-teaching staff.
The department will continue to keep the NFF, including the operation of the ACA, under review for 2026/27 and beyond.
Asked by: Freddie van Mierlo (Liberal Democrat - Henley and Thame)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment she has made of the number of unfilled vacancies on school governing bodies.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
According to the National Governance Association’s 2024 survey, 25% of respondents stated that their board did not have any vacancies. 76% of respondents reported difficulty in recruiting new governors and trustees. 44% of boards had two or more vacancies.
The department has had extensive discussions about recruitment and retention with sector partners, including the National Governance Association and the Confederation of School Trusts. These discussions have informed the development of a joint department-sector resource that will support boards with sustainable governance, especially those facing recruitment and retention challenges.
Asked by: Freddie van Mierlo (Liberal Democrat - Henley and Thame)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the level of administrative workload placed on early years providers in implementing the early years funding system; and whether she is taking steps to streamline (a) reporting and (b) funding claim processes.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Local authorities are responsible for paying early years providers to deliver the early education and childcare entitlements. The department does not provide guidance to local authorities on how they pay providers as each local authority will have its own local process for making funding payments.
Local authorities must enter into arrangements with childcare providers for the delivery of free early education and childcare to ensure the providers comply with legislative requirements.
As set out in our statutory guidance, local authorities should be clear in their agreements with providers about how and when providers will be paid and the documentation required from providers in order to receive payment.
The department will continue to work closely with the sector to continue to look at how the system is working, and ensure every child gets the best start in life.
Asked by: Freddie van Mierlo (Liberal Democrat - Henley and Thame)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that early years funding rates reflect the actual cost of delivering high-quality childcare.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
I refer the hon. Member for Henley and Thame to the answer of 27 May 2025 to Question 53702.
Asked by: Freddie van Mierlo (Liberal Democrat - Henley and Thame)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to ensure that children with (a) diabetes and (b) other medical needs are able to access wraparound care provided by (i) breakfast, (ii) after school and (iii) holiday clubs.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
All children and families should be able to access the benefits of wraparound care around the school day and term time. This is why the department is investing in new free universal breakfast clubs and new and expanded before and after school places through the wraparound childcare programme, alongside the Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) programme.
Under the Equality Act 2010, schools and providers of wraparound and holiday care must make reasonable adjustments for children with disabilities and medical conditions. In addition, section 100 of the Children and Families Act 2014 places a duty on maintained schools, academies and pupil referral units to make arrangements for supporting pupils with medical conditions.
The department’s guidance on wraparound, breakfast clubs and HAF programmes is clear that schools and providers should be aware of any medical requirements of pupils and encourages providers to review the ‘Supporting pupils at school with medical conditions’ statutory guidance, which can be accessed here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5ce6a72e40f0b620a103bd53/supporting-pupils-at-school-with-medical-conditions.pdf. Although the duty does not extend to out of school setting providers, this guidance contains information that may be useful in considering how to best support children with medical conditions.