Asked by: Tracy Brabin (Labour (Co-op) - Batley and Spen)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many children are currently eligible for 15 hours of free childcare for disadvantaged two-year olds; and what proportion of eligible children are in receipt of that childcare.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
In January 2018, 154,960 two year olds benefitted from funded early education, representing 72% of the eligible population. Local authority breakdowns are available in Tables 1A and 8LA of the ‘Education provision: children under 5 years of age, January 2018’ national statistics release, which is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/education-provision-children-under-5-years-of-age-january-2018.
The 2019 national statistics release, covering the position in January 2019, will be published in June 2019.
Asked by: Tracy Brabin (Labour (Co-op) - Batley and Spen)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the average cost to the public purse is of providing 15 hours of free childcare for a disadvantaged two-year old.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
The average cost to the public purse of providing 15 hours, across 38 weeks, of free childcare for a disadvantaged two-year-old is around £3,080.
Asked by: Tracy Brabin (Labour (Co-op) - Batley and Spen)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what proportion of disadvantaged children are eligible for 30 hours of free childcare.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
Eligibility for the 30 hours entitlement is based on parental income. It is available to families where both parents are working (or the sole parent is working in a lone parent family), and each parent earns the equivalent of a weekly minimum of 16 hours at national minimum wage or national living wage, and less than £100,000 per year. This also includes self-employed parents and parents on zero-hour contracts.
The government has made provisions to ensure that parents in certain circumstances will be regarded as being in work. This includes couple families where one parent is in receipt of benefits relating to caring responsibilities or their disability.
Full details on the eligibility criteria are set out in the regulations, which can be found here: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2016/1257/contents/made.
Asked by: Tracy Brabin (Labour (Co-op) - Batley and Spen)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what proportion of eligible children are receiving 15 hours of free childcare for disadvantaged two-year olds in each local authority.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
In January 2018, 154,960 two year olds benefitted from funded early education, representing 72% of the eligible population. Local authority breakdowns are available in Tables 1A and 8LA of the ‘Education provision: children under 5 years of age, January 2018’ national statistics release, which is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/education-provision-children-under-5-years-of-age-january-2018.
The 2019 national statistics release, covering the position in January 2019, will be published in June 2019.
Asked by: Tracy Brabin (Labour (Co-op) - Batley and Spen)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the total cost to the public purse was of providing 30 hours of free childcare for 3 and 4 year olds in the (a) autumn 2018 and b) spring 2019 terms.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
The government funds local authorities to deliver the early years entitlements on a financial year basis. Allocations for each of the 3 and 4-year old entitlements are:
| 2018-19 allocation (provisional) |
Universal 15 hours entitlement for 3 and 4-year-olds | £2.29 billion |
Additional 15 hours entitlement for eligible working parents of 3 and 4-year-olds | £693 million |
Full details, including allocations for the other early years funding streams (15 hours entitlement for disadvantaged 2-year-old children, the early years pupil premium, disability access fund and maintained nursery schools supplementary funding) can be found here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dedicated-schools-grant-dsg-2018-to-2019.
Final funding allocations for 2018-19 will be updated in the summer using data from the January 2019 schools and early years census.
Asked by: Tracy Brabin (Labour (Co-op) - Batley and Spen)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate he has made of the average cost of childcare for children aged between one and two years old in (a) one parent and (b) two parent families.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
Parents of children aged 0-2 in England that use childcare reported paying an average of £79 per child per week during term-time in 2018. The amounts paid by families vary depending on the amount of childcare used by their child, by the number of children in the family, by childcare provider type used, and by home region.
This data is published as annual official statistics from the ‘Childcare and Early Years Survey of Parents’.
Asked by: Tracy Brabin (Labour (Co-op) - Batley and Spen)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what information his Department holds on the proportion of early years providers that are co-operatives.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
Information on early years providers that are co-operatives is not held centrally.
The department’s Survey of Childcare and Early Years Providers collects data on group-based providers, maintained providers and childminders. The survey is published annually.
Asked by: Tracy Brabin (Labour (Co-op) - Batley and Spen)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the specific funding needs of early-years settings in deprived communities where provision is almost exclusively local authority funded.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
We will be spending around £6 billion on childcare support in 2019-20 – a record amount. That includes funding for our free early education entitlements, on which we plan to spend around £3.5 billion this year alone.
The government’s Early Years National Funding Formula allocates funding to local authorities for the purpose of delivering our early years entitlements. Our new formula was introduced in April 2017 following extensive consultation and it includes an additional needs factor to weight funding according to disadvantage.
To accompany the government response to the consultation, we published an Equalities Impact Assessment looking into the effects of the formula on specific groups. Both documents may be found at the following link:
We also require local authority funding formulas, which allocate funding to providers, to have a mandatory deprivation supplement.
The government recognises the need to keep the evidence base on costs up to date. We continue to monitor the provider market closely through a range of regular and one-off research projects which provide insight into various aspects of the provider market.
Asked by: Tracy Brabin (Labour (Co-op) - Batley and Spen)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many childminder agencies there are; and how many childminders are members of childminder agencies.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
This is a matter for Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector, Amanda Spielman. I have asked her to write to the hon. Member and a copy of her reply will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
Asked by: Tracy Brabin (Labour (Co-op) - Batley and Spen)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many full-time equivalent staff of his Department are working on (a) early years' policy and (b) policy on provision of 30 hours of free childcare for three and four year olds.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
As of 15 November 2018, there were around 60 full-time equivalent members of staff working on early years’ policy and this includes the delivery of 30 hours of free childcare for three and four-year olds. Other staff members in the funding and analysis teams also contribute to the early years’ policy development as part of their work.