Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many and what proportion of childcare hours funded by the Government are used in (a) England and (b) Ellesmere Port and Neston constituency.

Government funding of early education is based on actual take-up. The number and percentage of disadvantaged 2-year-olds and all 3 and 4-year-old children registered to received funded early education in January 2021 in Cheshire West and Chester local authority and England is published in the National Statistics release ‘Education Provision: Children under 5 years of age’, which can be accessed here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/education-provision-children-under-5/2021. This information is also attached. Figures by parliamentary constituency are not available, therefore data has been provided for Cheshire West and Chester local authority, in which Ellesmere Port and Neston parliamentary constituency is located.

All children aged 3 and 4-years-old, and eligible disadvantaged 2-year-olds, are entitled to 15 hours per week of funded early education for 38 weeks of the year. Eligible working parents of 3 and 4-year-olds are entitled to an additional 15 weekly hours of extended funded early education for 38 weeks of the year. It is estimated that almost 3 in 4 eligible children took up some extended hours in January 2021. It is not possible to calculate this estimate at local authority level, therefore the percentage take-up is not included in the attached table.