Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to help ensure childcare provision is available for (a) night workers and (b) shift workers working anti-social hours.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department is providing over £4.1 billion by the 2027/28 financial year to fund 30 hours of free childcare per week (38 weeks per year) for working parents with children aged nine months to three years in England. This will remove one of the biggest barriers to parents working by vastly increasing the amount of free childcare that working families can access. This is set to save working families who use the full 30 funded hours up to £6,900 per year from when their child is nine months until they are five years old by September next year.
Already, hundreds of thousands of children aged three and four are registered for a 30-hour place, which can save eligible working parents up to £6,000 per child per year. Expanding this entitlement will help even more eligible working parents with the cost of childcare and make a real difference to the lives of those families.
To be eligible for the expanded 30 hours entitlement, as with the current 30 hours offer, parents will need to earn the equivalent of 16 hours a week at national minimum wage or living wage, which is £183 per week or £9,518 per year in 2024-2025, and less than £100,000 adjusted net income per year. For families with two parents, both must be working to meet the criteria, unless one is receiving certain benefits. In a single-parent household, the single parent must meet the threshold. This offer aims to support parents to return to work or to work more hours, if they wish.
In addition to the expanded entitlements, the government has also taken action to support parents on Universal Credit with childcare costs upfront when they need it, rather than in arrears. The department has increased support for these parents by increasing the childcare cost maximum amounts to £950 for one child and £1629 for two children.
Tax-Free Childcare remains available for working parents of children aged 0-11, or up to 17 for eligible disabled children. This can save parents up to £2,000 per year, or up to £4,000 for eligible children with disabilities and has the same income criteria as 30 hours free childcare.
The department is committed to improving the cost, choice, and availability of childcare and government funding schemes are designed to be flexible enough to support families’ different situations, including parents who are night workers and shift workers.
The government is investing £289 million in a new wraparound childcare programme. The government’s ambition is for all parents of primary school children who need it to be able to access childcare in their local area from 8am to 6pm. Parents will still be expected to pay to access this provision but support will be available to eligible parents through Universal Credit childcare and Tax Free Childcare.
Parents should expect to see an expansion in the availability of wraparound care from September 2024, with every parent who needs it able to access term-time wraparound childcare by September 2026. The department is also providing over £200 million a year for the continuation of the Holiday Activities and Food programme and the department is investing a transformational £560 million in youth services in England over the next three years. This is part of a wider package the government has provided long term to support young people facing the greatest challenges.
The department will also continue to monitor the sufficiency of childcare places across the sector. The department’s Childcare and Early Years Provider Survey shows that both the number of places available and the workforce has increased since 2022.
Local authorities are responsible for ensuring that the provision of childcare is sufficient to meet the requirements of parents in their area. Where local authorities report sufficiency challenges, the department discusses what action the local authority is taking to address those issues and where needed support the local authority with any specific requirements through its childcare sufficiency support contract.
The department has regular contact with each local authority in England about their sufficiency of childcare and any issues they are facing.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to assess the potential impact of the cost of childcare on single parents.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department is providing over £4.1 billion by the 2027/28 financial year to fund 30 hours of free childcare per week (38 weeks per year) for working parents with children aged nine months to three years in England. This will remove one of the biggest barriers to parents working by vastly increasing the amount of free childcare that working families can access. This is set to save working families who use the full 30 funded hours up to £6,900 per year from when their child is nine months until they are five years old by September next year.
Already, hundreds of thousands of children aged three and four are registered for a 30-hour place, which can save eligible working parents up to £6,000 per child per year. Expanding this entitlement will help even more eligible working parents with the cost of childcare and make a real difference to the lives of those families.
To be eligible for the expanded 30 hours entitlement, as with the current 30 hours offer, parents will need to earn the equivalent of 16 hours a week at national minimum wage or living wage, which is £183 per week or £9,518 per year in 2024-2025, and less than £100,000 adjusted net income per year. For families with two parents, both must be working to meet the criteria, unless one is receiving certain benefits. In a single-parent household, the single parent must meet the threshold. This offer aims to support parents to return to work or to work more hours, if they wish.
In addition to the expanded entitlements, the government has also taken action to support parents on Universal Credit with childcare costs upfront when they need it, rather than in arrears. The department has increased support for these parents by increasing the childcare cost maximum amounts to £950 for one child and £1629 for two children.
Tax-Free Childcare remains available for working parents of children aged 0-11, or up to 17 for eligible disabled children. This can save parents up to £2,000 per year, or up to £4,000 for eligible children with disabilities and has the same income criteria as 30 hours free childcare.
The department is committed to improving the cost, choice, and availability of childcare and government funding schemes are designed to be flexible enough to support families’ different situations, including parents who are night workers and shift workers.
The government is investing £289 million in a new wraparound childcare programme. The government’s ambition is for all parents of primary school children who need it to be able to access childcare in their local area from 8am to 6pm. Parents will still be expected to pay to access this provision but support will be available to eligible parents through Universal Credit childcare and Tax Free Childcare.
Parents should expect to see an expansion in the availability of wraparound care from September 2024, with every parent who needs it able to access term-time wraparound childcare by September 2026. The department is also providing over £200 million a year for the continuation of the Holiday Activities and Food programme and the department is investing a transformational £560 million in youth services in England over the next three years. This is part of a wider package the government has provided long term to support young people facing the greatest challenges.
The department will also continue to monitor the sufficiency of childcare places across the sector. The department’s Childcare and Early Years Provider Survey shows that both the number of places available and the workforce has increased since 2022.
Local authorities are responsible for ensuring that the provision of childcare is sufficient to meet the requirements of parents in their area. Where local authorities report sufficiency challenges, the department discusses what action the local authority is taking to address those issues and where needed support the local authority with any specific requirements through its childcare sufficiency support contract.
The department has regular contact with each local authority in England about their sufficiency of childcare and any issues they are facing.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to help ensure the affordability of anti-social hours' childcare.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department is providing over £4.1 billion by the 2027/28 financial year to fund 30 hours of free childcare per week (38 weeks per year) for working parents with children aged nine months to three years in England. This will remove one of the biggest barriers to parents working by vastly increasing the amount of free childcare that working families can access. This is set to save working families who use the full 30 funded hours up to £6,900 per year from when their child is nine months until they are five years old by September next year.
Already, hundreds of thousands of children aged three and four are registered for a 30-hour place, which can save eligible working parents up to £6,000 per child per year. Expanding this entitlement will help even more eligible working parents with the cost of childcare and make a real difference to the lives of those families.
To be eligible for the expanded 30 hours entitlement, as with the current 30 hours offer, parents will need to earn the equivalent of 16 hours a week at national minimum wage or living wage, which is £183 per week or £9,518 per year in 2024-2025, and less than £100,000 adjusted net income per year. For families with two parents, both must be working to meet the criteria, unless one is receiving certain benefits. In a single-parent household, the single parent must meet the threshold. This offer aims to support parents to return to work or to work more hours, if they wish.
In addition to the expanded entitlements, the government has also taken action to support parents on Universal Credit with childcare costs upfront when they need it, rather than in arrears. The department has increased support for these parents by increasing the childcare cost maximum amounts to £950 for one child and £1629 for two children.
Tax-Free Childcare remains available for working parents of children aged 0-11, or up to 17 for eligible disabled children. This can save parents up to £2,000 per year, or up to £4,000 for eligible children with disabilities and has the same income criteria as 30 hours free childcare.
The department is committed to improving the cost, choice, and availability of childcare and government funding schemes are designed to be flexible enough to support families’ different situations, including parents who are night workers and shift workers.
The government is investing £289 million in a new wraparound childcare programme. The government’s ambition is for all parents of primary school children who need it to be able to access childcare in their local area from 8am to 6pm. Parents will still be expected to pay to access this provision but support will be available to eligible parents through Universal Credit childcare and Tax Free Childcare.
Parents should expect to see an expansion in the availability of wraparound care from September 2024, with every parent who needs it able to access term-time wraparound childcare by September 2026. The department is also providing over £200 million a year for the continuation of the Holiday Activities and Food programme and the department is investing a transformational £560 million in youth services in England over the next three years. This is part of a wider package the government has provided long term to support young people facing the greatest challenges.
The department will also continue to monitor the sufficiency of childcare places across the sector. The department’s Childcare and Early Years Provider Survey shows that both the number of places available and the workforce has increased since 2022.
Local authorities are responsible for ensuring that the provision of childcare is sufficient to meet the requirements of parents in their area. Where local authorities report sufficiency challenges, the department discusses what action the local authority is taking to address those issues and where needed support the local authority with any specific requirements through its childcare sufficiency support contract.
The department has regular contact with each local authority in England about their sufficiency of childcare and any issues they are facing.
Asked by: Fabian Hamilton (Labour - Leeds North East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether there will be any new funding for local authorities to deliver 15 hours of free childcare.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department is delivering the largest expansion of childcare in England’s history. By the 2027/28 financial year, this government expects to be spending in excess of £8 billion every year, double what it currently does on childcare, on free hours and early education to help working families with their childcare costs.
The department has provided local authorities with £12 million of delivery support funding in the 2023/24 financial year to help them plan and prepare for the entitlement’s expansion, as well as £100 million of capital funding to help expand or refurbish facilities.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to help increase childcare provision in (a) South Holland and the Deepings constituency and (b) Lincolnshire.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
In the government’s Spring Budget, the Chancellor of Exchequer announced transformative reforms to childcare for parents, children and the economy. By 2027/28, this government will expect to be spending in excess of £8 billion every year on free hours and early education, helping working families with their childcare costs.
A commitment has been made to ensure that 30 hours of funded childcare is available for every child over the age of nine months with working parents by September 2025.
More parents are going to be able to return to work while balancing childcare commitments, thanks to the government’s £4 billion per year expansion of childcare in England. This is the largest expansion of funded childcare ever and will remove barriers to work for nearly half a million parents with a child under three in England.
South Holland and the Deepings constituency is within the area covered by Lincolnshire County Council.
Local authorities have received £12 million of local authority delivery support funding for this financial year to support with meeting programme and delivery costs associated with rolling out the expanded early year entitlements, from which Lincolnshire County Council received £125,423.
Local authorities have also received a £100 million allocation for local areas to use to make sure childcare settings in their areas have enough physical space, which is anticipated to add thousands of new childcare places across the country. Lincolnshire County Council received £1,461,094 from this fund.
Under Section 6 of the Childcare Act 2006, local authorities are responsible for ensuring that the provision of childcare is sufficient to meet the requirements of parents in their area. Part B of the ‘Early education and childcare’ statutory guidance for local authorities highlights that local authorities are required to report annually to elected council members on how they are meeting their duty to secure sufficient childcare, and to make this report available and accessible to parents.
If Lincolnshire County Council report any sufficiency challenges, the department discusses what action the local authority is taking to address those issues, and where needed, supports them with any specific requirements through its childcare sufficiency support contract.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to help ensure the availability of childcare (a) before and (b) after school.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The government is investing £289 million in a new wraparound childcare programme to support local authorities in England to work with primary schools and providers to set up and deliver more wraparound childcare before and after school in the term time. The government’s ambition is for all parents of primary school children who need it to be able to access childcare in their local area from 8am to 6pm by September 2026. This will help to ensure that parents have enough childcare to work full time, more hours and with flexible hours.
In October 2023, the department published guidance for local authorities on their role to support the expansion of wraparound childcare along with local authority funding allocations. This guidance can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/wraparound-childcare-guidance-for-local-authorities. In February 2024, the department also published guidance for schools and trusts setting out the expectations of schools in supporting parents to access wraparound childcare. This guidance can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/wraparound-childcare-guidance-for-schools/responding-to-requests-for-wraparound-childcare.
This month, the local authorities of Cambridgeshire, Central Bedfordshire, Kensington and Chelsea, Norfolk and Westminster will be rolling out expanded wraparound provision, five months ahead of the national programme launch in September. These local authorities are forming part of a test and learn phase as ‘early adopters’ to strengthen the delivery of the full rollout.
Asked by: Thérèse Coffey (Conservative - Suffolk Coastal)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to increase nursery staff in Suffolk, in the context of the Government's plans to expand the number of free childcare places.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department has launched a range of new workforce initiatives to boost early years staff numbers. The department's £6.5 million-backed recruitment campaign ‘Do something BIG. Work with small children’ is raising the status of early years to boost recruitment of talented staff. The department has also launched Skills Bootcamps for Early Years, which enables learners across the country, including in Suffolk, to progress on an accelerated Level 3 Early Years Educator Apprenticeship.
On top of this, the department has launched a pilot to test whether financial incentives help to boost recruitment, and have made it easier for managers to make the most of the skills of their existing staff through changes to the Early Years Foundation Stage, including the removal of the Level 2 maths requirement for staff to count in Level 3 child to staff ratios. A link to the statutory framework can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/early-years-foundation-stage-framework--2.
Under Section 6 of the Childcare Act 2006, local authorities are responsible for ensuring that the provision of childcare is sufficient to meet the requirements of parents in their area. The department has regular contact with each local authority in England, including Suffolk, about the sufficiency of childcare in their area, including their work to support Early Years (EY) workforce recruitment and retention.
The department will continue to monitor the recruitment of EY staff alongside the sufficiency of childcare provision and are committed to continuing to work with the sector to understand how the department can further support EY workforce recruitment and retention.
Asked by: Bridget Phillipson (Labour - Houghton and Sunderland South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate she has made of the number of childminders on the (a) Early Years Register and (b) Childcare Register in (i) each region and (ii) each local authority in each year since 2018.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
This is a matter for His Majesty’s Chief Inspector, Sir Martyn Oliver. I have asked him to write to the hon. Member and a copy of his reply will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
Asked by: Stella Creasy (Labour (Co-op) - Walthamstow)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to paragraph 3.15 of the Spring Budget 2024, HC 560, what weighting was given to (a) average earnings growth, (b) changes in the National Living Wage and (c) the (i) consumer price index and (ii) other measures of inflation when estimating that there would be £500 million of additional funding in the 2025-26 and 2026-27 financial years.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The last economic data available at the time funding rates are set will be used to determine the proportions allocated in the 2025/6 and 2026/7 financial years.
The department estimates the changing costs to providers by using the annual results of the Survey of Childcare and Early Years Providers and the department’s cost pressures model, which also takes account of the different ages of children, as both reported staff-child ratios and the relative proportion of entitlement hours delivered by different provider types vary by child age. Separate calculations are therefore performed in respect of the different entitlements.
Asked by: Stella Creasy (Labour (Co-op) - Walthamstow)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to paragraph 3.15 of the Spring Budget 2024, HC 560, how much and what proportion of the estimated £500 million of additional funding she plans to allocate in the (a) 2025-26 and (b) 2026-27 financial year.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The last economic data available at the time funding rates are set will be used to determine the proportions allocated in the 2025/6 and 2026/7 financial years.
The department estimates the changing costs to providers by using the annual results of the Survey of Childcare and Early Years Providers and the department’s cost pressures model, which also takes account of the different ages of children, as both reported staff-child ratios and the relative proportion of entitlement hours delivered by different provider types vary by child age. Separate calculations are therefore performed in respect of the different entitlements.