Childcare: Local Government

(asked on 14th April 2023) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate her Department has made of the number of local authorities which do not have sufficient childcare places in their area for children aged between 0 and 5 years old.


Answered by
Claire Coutinho Portrait
Claire Coutinho
Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero
This question was answered on 19th April 2023

Under Section 6 of the Childcare Act 2006, local authorities are responsible for ensuring that the provision of childcare is sufficient to meet the requirements of parents in their area. Part B of the Early Education and Childcare statutory guidance for local authorities highlights that local authorities are required to report annually to elected council members on how they are meeting their duty to secure sufficient childcare, and to make this report available and accessible to parents.

The department has regular contact with each local authority in England about their sufficiency of childcare and any issues they are facing.

Where local authorities report sufficiency challenges we discuss what action the local authority is taking to address those issues and where needed, support the local authority with any specific requirements through our childcare sufficiency support contract.

The department monitors take up of the early years entitlements through the annual census and publishes the results at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/education-provision-children-under-5.

The Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and Alternative Provision (AP) Improvement Plan, published on 2 March 2023, sets out how an effective single national SEND and AP system will be delivered. Many of the proposals in the improvement plan will include early years education, including the funding we are providing to train up to 5,000 early years Special Educational Needs Co-Ordinators (SENCOs) to gain an accredited Level 3 Early Years SENCO qualification.

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