Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to ensure the financial stability of early years providers during the covid-19 outbreak.
The government understands the importance of childcare, which is why we are planning to spend over £3.6 billion on our free early education entitlements in 2020-21.
The COVID-19 outbreak is a testing and disruptive time for all parts of society and the economy, including for the early years sector. We recognise the risk to providers’ financial viability that is caused by changing levels of parental demand.
We are providing extra stability and reassurance to nurseries and childminders that are open by ‘block-buying’ childcare places for the rest of this year at the level that we would have funded before the COVID-19 outbreak, regardless of how many children are attending.
On top of that, nurseries, childminders and pre-schools can claim for various other forms of business support, including for the Coronavirus Job Retention and Self Employment Income Support Schemes.
To provide additional support to firms to keep employees as demand returns, my right hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, introduced the Job Retention Bonus. This is a one-off payment of £1,000 to employers for each employee who was ever furloughed, has been continuously employed until 31 January 2021 and is still employed by the same employer as of 31 January 2021.
Around £60 million per year of supplementary funding is also being provided to local authorities to enable them to protect maintained nursery schools’ funding. We announced on 24 August that we will continue to provide this for the whole of the 2020-21 academic year.
We will continue to work closely with both local authorities and the early years sector organisations to monitor the impact of the outbreak on the sector.
Future funding for the sector will be considered in the next Spending Review.