Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to help increase the availability of childcare in Aldershot constituency.

Giving children the best start in life is key to the government’s Opportunity Mission. Good parenting and high-quality early education provide the foundation for children to achieve and thrive. This government is determined to ensure that parents have access to high-quality, affordable and flexible early education and childcare.

The department is rolling out more government-funded childcare entitlements to help millions of families, working hand in hand with the early years sector to build a system that works for them, parents and above all, children. This includes delivering 3,000 new and expanded school-based nurseries to make high-quality childcare accessible and available. As a first step, primary schools can now apply for up to £150,000 of £15 million capital funding for nursery places to open from September 2025. High-quality, school-based nursery provision is popular with parents, especially families with multiple children. It can help schools upgrade spare space whilst also providing early support to children and families, supporting their transition into primary school. School-based nursery settings have proportionally higher qualified staff and see lower staff turnover, providing more consistency of care for children. Proportionally, school-based nurseries also look after more children with special educational needs and disabilities and offer a higher proportion of places in the most deprived areas.

In the 2024/2025 financial year, early years providers are set to benefit from over £2 billion extra investment compared to last year, to support the rollout of 30 hours of government-funded early education from next September, rising in 2027/28 to over £4.1 billion. As announced in the Autumn Budget 2024, the department expects to provide over £8 billion for the early years entitlements in 2025/2026, which is around a 30% increase compared to 2024/25, as we continue to deliver the expansion to eligible working parents of children aged from nine months. Departmental hourly funding rates for Hampshire have been confirmed at, for 3 to 4-year-olds: £5.98 for 2-year-olds: £8.32 and for under 2s: £11:30.

The planned September 2025 childcare rollout of 30 funded hours per week will go ahead, but there will be challenges including providers securing enough staff and places to meet demand, with the capacity needed varying across the country. The department is supporting the sector to attract talented staff and childminders to join the workforce by creating conditions for improved recruitment. The department is urging the public to ‘do something BIG’ and start a career working with small children through our national recruitment campaign. Our dedicated website also helps people find out more about gaining qualifications and search for existing job vacancies.

Skills Bootcamps for the early years are available and lead to an accelerated apprenticeship, and we are funding Early Years Initial Teacher Training as a route for new and existing staff to gain Early Years Teacher Status. To support childminders to join and stay in the profession, the department has implemented new flexibilities to work with more people and spend more time working from non-domestic premises.

The department is working closely with local areas and the early years sector to do everything we can to ensure there are enough places and the sector has the workforce it needs to provide those places and to bridge local gaps ahead of September 2025.