Children: Day Care

(asked on 22nd November 2017) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the effect of the minimum wage on the ability of early years providers to deliver 30 hours of free childcare.


Answered by
Robert Goodwill Portrait
Robert Goodwill
This question was answered on 27th November 2017

Our ‘Review of Childcare Costs’ looked at both the current costs of childcare provision and the implications of future cost pressures facing the sector, including the National Living Wage. Our new funding rates are based on this review, which was described as “thorough and wide ranging” by the National Audit Office.

The government will be investing £1 billion a year to deliver 30 hours of free childcare and increase our hourly funding rates for the free entitlements. The government’s total hourly funding rate for three and four-year-olds (national average to local councils) increased from £4.56 to £4.94 in April 2017. This compares very favourably with research into the cost of childcare, published by Frontier Economics in July 2017, which shows that the mean hourly delivery cost of a three/four-year-old place was £3.72.

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