Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans she has to (a) evaluate the piloting of 30 hours free childcare from September 2016 and (b) publish the outcome of such an evaluation.

We have had 1793 expressions of interest for the pilots of the 30 hours of free childcare for working families. These will commence in September 2016. Innovative childcare providers are being asked to come forward as the first to deliver the offer. We plan to build a strong evaluation strand into the work of the early implementers focusing primarily on qualitative evaluation and capturing and sharing lessons learned and good practice.