Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the potential effect of the introduction of the 30-hour free childcare entitlement on sessional early years provision in rural areas.

The Department recognises that providers and families living and operating in rural communities are faced with particular barriers in regards to accessing and delivering childcare.

We are therefore looking at what those challenges are and how they can be addressed as part of our Early Implementation of the 30 Hours Free Childcare entitlement. Northumberland, one of our early implementer local authorities, is looking specifically at how the extended hours work for and impact on providers operating within the most rural postcodes in Northumberland. Since September, over 500 children in the most rural parts of Northumberland have been benefiting from a 30 hours free childcare place a year early.

We have also recently consulted on a comprehensive set of reforms to the early years funding system, and one of our proposals is to allow local authorities to use a rurality/sparsity supplement in their local funding formulae, in recognition that there may be unavoidable higher costs to providers operating in sparsely populated, rural areas. We are currently considering all responses to the consultation and are planning to publish the government’s response shortly.