Children: Day Care

(asked on 26th October 2016) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the cost to her Department was of commissioning Frontier Economics to develop a framework for measuring the impact of the new entitlement for free childcare.


Answered by
Caroline Dinenage Portrait
Caroline Dinenage
This question was answered on 3rd November 2016

The Department has demonstrated its commitment to evaluating the longer-term impact of the free entitlement, by publishing an evaluation feasibility study in February 2016, and gaining independent advice on the data and methods open to us. Frontier Economics was commissioned by the Department to undertake this work at a cost of £14,850 (exclusive of tax).

We have since commissioned an independent evaluation of Early Implementation of the 30 hours free childcare entitlement. This evaluation will focus on generating learning that can be used by Early Implementers and all local authorities ahead of national rollout in September 2017. It will be carried out by Frontier Economics working with NatCen Social Research and Ivana La Valle (an independent researcher).

We will use the learning from the early implementers to continue to inform the full-roll out of the entitlement.

Reticulating Splines