Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the impact of her policies on the childcare workforce.

In accordance with standard practice, new policies which have been introduced to support the early years workforce will be evaluated to understand their impact and effectiveness. This includes the recently announced national recruitment campaign and early years financial incentives pilot, details of which can be found at: https://earlyyearscareers.campaign.gov.uk/.

The department is also regularly engaging with both local authorities and early years providers from across the country to better understand the impact of workforce policies on the early years workforce in their local areas.

Additionally, the department collects information on the childcare workforce through the Survey of Childcare and Early Years Providers which showed 13,000 more people working in the sector in 2023 alone. The survey can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/childcare-and-early-years-providers-survey-2023.