Government’s Childcare Expansion

Statement

The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Thursday 17 October.

“With permission, I will make a Statement on the Government’s plans to deliver additional places in school-based nurseries, and a clarification on Government action on so-called top-up fees for funded childcare hours. I will also update the House on the Government’s response to the consultation on safeguarding requirements in the early years foundation stage framework.

The Secretary of State has promised a new era of child-centred government, working alongside the sector to deliver meaningful long-term reform of the early years system. The Government believe that all children deserve access to a brilliant early education, regardless of who they are, where they come from or their parents’ income. Today marks a significant step for thousands of families, as we begin the first stage of the Government’s plan to deliver 3,000 new or expanded school-based nurseries. From today, primary schools can apply for a grant of up to £150,000 from a £15 million capital funding pot to make the changes needed for their site to accommodate a nursery.

The new or expanded nurseries are set to open across England from the start of the next school year. We have chosen to expand school-based nurseries because schools are at the heart of our communities. School-based nurseries cater for a higher proportion of children with special educational needs and disabilities, and offer a higher share of nursery places in the most deprived areas. To support our most vulnerable children and build on the existing market, the funding will be available for projects that are either school-run or delivered on the school’s site by private and voluntary providers or childminders. Schools will be asked to work with local authorities to demonstrate local parental demand for places. If there are primary schools that are interested in this programme but are not currently ready or eligible to host new nursery places, we encourage them to register an interest for the future. We expect funding to be allocated to successful schools in spring 2025 to support delivery of the first nursery places from September 2025.

As we expand the childcare system, it is crucial that early education and childcare remains fair and accessible to all parents. That is why we are taking action to address situations where parents are facing high and additional charges on top of the funded entitlement hours. Those charges, which may include mandatory fees for nappies, lunch, or additional hours, should not be a condition for accessing a funded place. The vast majority of providers are working hard to make sure that parents can access their entitlements, but any sort of mandatory additional charging or preferential treatment towards parents who purchase optional extras is not acceptable. Over the next few months, my department will engage with local authorities, providers and parents to develop and clarify guidance on this issue, including on so-called ‘top-up fees’. We will support local authorities to protect parents from overcharging.

I turn to new childcare entitlements. In September, working parents of children aged nine months and above were able to access 15 hours per week of Government-funded early education for the first time. I can confirm that over 320,000 additional children are now accessing the new entitlement. Delivering the scheme has not been without difficulty and owes much to the collaboration between local authorities, providers and the work of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State, who has made ensuring the rollout a priority. At the same time, we are helping the sector to deliver the necessary places for September 2025. This final, more challenging phase of the rollout will increase the funded childcare entitlement of working parents to 30 hours per week.

Trust matters in politics, which is why I want to reiterate this Government’s commitment to honouring the promise made by the last Government to deliver these entitlements, but the House should be in no doubt that this will be an extremely difficult task. There remains a significant shortage of staff and places. The Government’s spending watchdog has said that, in order to deliver the rollout, in some parts of the country we will need to double or even triple capacity in order to provide the additional hours. There are substantial gaps to fill, left behind knowingly by the Conservative Party. We must be honest with families about the fact that in some parts of England, while parents may receive the hours they were promised, they may not get their first choice of nursery or childminder.

I assure the House that we will continue to work tirelessly to bridge the gaps in time for next September, and our plans to expand primary school-based nurseries will help us to deliver these entitlements. Our priority is to provide high-quality education and care for children while ensuring their safety, in order to give every child the best start in life.

Today the department published its official response to the consultation on proposals to strengthen safeguarding requirements in the statutory early years foundation stage framework. These reforms are set to be implemented from September 2025. The changes to be made to the framework are based on lessons learned from tragic past events, responses to our consultation, and feedback from safeguarding experts and the sector. The consultation received 1,470 responses, with strong support for all the proposals. The department will therefore implement all the proposals, including those on safer recruitment, child absences, safer eating, safeguarding training, and paediatric first aid training. There will also be new proposals on providing employment references and supporting whistleblowing. These changes will formalise existing best practices, and will ensure that all early years educators have the knowledge and support that they need to deliver safe, high-quality early education and childcare.

As many parents know, childminders are a key part of the early education and childcare market, providing choice and flexibility. We are already delivering childminder start-up grants to help new childminders with the costs of registering, and on 1 November we will introduce new flexibilities for childminders to help them join and stay in the profession. These changes will create a new category of childminder who can work entirely from non-domestic premises. The total number of people who can work together under a childminder’s registration will increase from three to four. Childminders will also have more flexibility to operate for more time outside domestic premises, for instance from a community hall or school. These new flexibilities will further support the Government’s commitment to rolling out expanded childcare entitlements and giving children the best start in life.

Parents’ need for childcare does not stop when their children reach primary school age. Since July, we have allocated more than £130 million to local authorities to begin delivering these new places to parents of primary school age children as part of the national wraparound childcare programme. Initial delivery plans indicate that this programme will deliver up to 200,000 new childcare places, at either end of the school day, available in over 50% of all primary schools. However, we want to go further to support hard-working families and tackle disadvantage, which is why we committed ourselves in our manifesto to introducing free breakfast clubs in every primary school.

Breakfast clubs can have a tremendously positive impact in helping children to arrive at school on time and ready to learn, while also helping working parents to have more choices in the workplace. From April 2025, free breakfast clubs will be available in up to 750 early adopter schools. That will be part of the test-and-learn phase, but new breakfast clubs, once rolled out nationally, will be available to every state-funded school with primary school age children, and will give parents more affordable childcare choices while also helping families with the cost of living. Children will be able to start the school day ready to learn, which will give them the best start in life and in their education.

This Government are determined to break down barriers to opportunity. That must start before school, with high-quality early education that is both available and affordable. We inherited a pledge without a plan, so this Labour Government must work to deliver the change that families need. We will deliver places in new nurseries, tackle unfair ‘top-up fees’, and ensure that every child can have the best start in life. I commend this Statement to the House”.

15:21:00

I welcome the Statement made in the other place last week on the Government’s childcare expansion, although I note that it might have been more constructive had the Minister acknowledged the transformation in childcare provision implemented by the previous Government and I hope the Minister can acknowledge that for the House today. I remind your Lordships that there were five major stages of that expansion. In 2010, we extended the entitlement for three and four year-olds, commonly taken as 15 hours a week for 38 weeks of the year. In 2013, we introduced 15 hours a week of free early education for disadvantaged two year-olds. In 2017, we built on that by doubling the entitlement for three and four year-olds to 30 hours a week and then in 2023 we announced measures to give working parents 30 hours a week of free childcare from nine months until the child starts school, building up over two years. This constituted the biggest expansion of childcare by any UK Government in history. I would like to ask the Minister a few questions. First, the previous Government, now on this side of the House, are delighted that the Government have committed to continuing our expansion of childcare, but I was concerned that the tone of the noble Baroness’s comments when answering an earlier Question on this subject sounded like a pitch-rolling to cut the offer and I wonder whether she could just reassure the House that that is not in the Government’s plans and set out the Government’s commitment. Certainly, there was a sense that the communications around this September’s rollout were perhaps more muted than we had expected. It is obviously critical that parents are aware of their future entitlements. If I may, I will try to ask the Minister again whether Sir David Bell did recommend in his review of early years to continue with the previous Government’s approach to childcare and whether she could confirm when the Government will publish the early years workforce strategy. Also covered in the Statement were the Government’s plans for implementing breakfast clubs and that the Government were taking a test-and-learn approach. I was puzzled by that, given that the previous Government already had a national school breakfast programme that was active in almost 2,700 schools and, as the Minister knows, many primary schools offer breakfast clubs already, I wonder what particular aspects the Government feel they need to test and learn from. Finally, in relation to school-based nurseries, can the Minister give the House a sense of how confident she feels about the Government’s target of opening the first school-based nurseries by September 2025, with the new funding? It looks like quite a short period to turn that around. Also, what assessment has been made of the impact of the imposition of VAT on the nursery provision of independent schools that have that provision?

My Lords, we on these Benches welcome the proposals; they are very much in line with our manifesto at the last election. I believe that all three parties, in perhaps slightly different ways, have a real desire to develop childcare provision. I want to tease out from the Minister the most important thing for early years childcare provision: the quality of the staff and the staff feeling valued. That means not just the salary but the training opportunities they get. Over the last decade or more, we have seen staff in nursery and early years settings feeling that they are there just as glorified helpers. One nursery nurse said to me, “I could get more stacking the shelves at Lidl than I get in my job in a nursery”. If we want brilliant early years education, we need staff who feel motivated and want a career in that line of work. I had a 100-place nursery in a primary school and I remember how the staff were absolutely devastated when their names were changed from “nursery nurse” to “NVQ level 4”. They hated that. There had been no consultation with them at all; it just happened as part of the skills agenda. That is my first point. My second point is that, while we welcome the commitment on top-up charges, we have also to recognise that the income generated in private nurseries sometimes caused real problems for them; but doing away with top-up charges is absolutely correct. I like the notion that we increasingly put nurseries in primary schools, where there is capacity. Why? Because the primary school can provide all the other things that are available there: advice on special educational needs, and a whole host of other opportunities. I am pleased about childminders—although I do not actually like the title “childminder”. They do not just mind children; they develop children. They get them to play, to interact, to talk, to learn and to discover. They do more than just minding—but I suppose we are stuck with that title. Childminders were very concerned several years ago when there was a movement towards doing away with single childminders; they had to be part of a company or a group. I thought that was wrong. So I recognise and welcome the proposals on childminding. It should not be a sort of privatised provision. Anybody who has the qualifications and experience should be allowed to do it. I want to make a final point. There is an aspiration to go to 30 weeks’ provision, but that provision does not cover a full calendar year. Nurseries—particularly private nurseries—find it very difficult because, at the end of the 30 weeks of provision, some parents, especially those from deprived communities, cannot pay the additional money, so they withdraw their children for that period. The nursery or early years setting then finds it difficult to financially survive. So, we need to look at how we ensure that there is equity for the provider as well.

I thank the noble Baroness and the noble Lord. I am very happy to accept that there has been an enormous transformation in the country’s attitude to childcare and in the extent of childcare available. When I entered the other House in 1997, following a considerable period of Conservative rule, we in Worcestershire were infamous for having the worst childcare provision across the whole of Europe. I am glad that people have seen that childcare and early years provision is important for people’s ability to go to work and, at this moment in time, to support people with the cost of living, but I think that the additional area where we need to focus more attention is that good early years provision is absolutely fundamental for children’s development and giving them the very best possible start in life. The noble Baroness suggested that the Government are pitch-rolling away from the pledge to entitle working parents to 30 hours of childcare a week from 2025; that is absolutely not the case. The Government are committed to providing that, but we are being transparent and honest about the challenge it will bring. As we said last week, it will mean another 75,000 childcare places and over 30,000 more staff will be necessary; that is a big challenge that needs a plan, not just an aspiration. I am sorry that the noble Baroness thought that the comms at the beginning of the school year were a little on the quiet side; I did a whole morning media round on this and shouted it from the rooftops. I am pleased that we were able to celebrate 320,000 more parents getting their childcare entitlement this year, but there is certainly more that we need to do. That is why we will work to look more strategically at what we need to do to develop the early years sector and have undertaken to develop a strategy, which I expect us to publish and bring to this House next year. The noble Baroness asked about breakfast clubs. A few weeks ago, we were able to announce the 750 trailblazing breakfast clubs that will be open by next year, which will build on previous work to get breakfast clubs into schools. However, we are also making a stronger commitment both to providing these free for all primary school pupils and to ensuring that the childcare element of the breakfast club is also in place—that is a very important way that we get children to school early and ready to learn, which does not necessarily happen just if you have a breakfast club, despite the excellent work those breakfast clubs are doing. On school-based nurseries, the noble Baroness is right that we announced last week £150 million of funding which schools can bid into, so that we can develop up to 300 school-based nurseries as part of our objective to have 3,000 of those over the course of this Parliament. The noble Lord is absolutely right that, if we are to achieve quality early years provision, we need to develop even further the brilliant staff who are working in early years and childcare. That means we need to reset our relationship with the childcare workforce, ensure that there is appropriate status for that role and think about training. We have already begun to provide, for example, more guidance around how to identify special educational needs, and we will want to continue that work. We are taking action on ensuring that mandatory extra top-up charges are not levied on parents who take up government-funded childcare places, and we will be working with the sector and with parents in order to make sure that we strengthen that guidance. Childminders do excellent work, but we have seen a halving of the numbers of childminders over recent years. The flexibilities, including the additional flexibilities announced last week, will help to ensure that childminding remains an important element of the childcare environment. The noble Lord raised a point about flexibility for school holidays. It is already the case that quite a lot of childcare provision, including that provided around schools, continues into the school holidays. However, in thinking about our overall development of provision and our strategy, we will certainly want to think about how we can ensure that that is as flexible and well supported as possible for parents to be able to use all year round because of the enormously important impact that it has on those parents and, more importantly, on children’s best start in life.

Before the Minister sits down, I wonder if she could clarify something. I heard her say that there was a £150 million capital pot for nurseries, but I think I read in the Statement that it was £15 million. If she cannot confirm that now, maybe she could write to us.

I apologise. The noble Baroness is absolutely right. I have been overambitious on the Government’s spending plans and I will be in big trouble for that. The figure is £15 million for up to 300 new or expanded nurseries. I thank the noble Baroness for allowing me to correct that.

15:36:00

My Lords, I welcome the decision by the Government to expand early-years provision, both education and childcare, but the Statement does not perhaps go far enough in clarifying some of the issues that are likely to emerge from that policy decision. The first, as the Statement makes clear, is that we do not have enough staff to carry out this expansion, certainly not in the timescale that the Government are hoping to achieve. What discussions are taking place with the providers of teacher education and training to try to increase the numbers of young people deciding to become teachers and who take on specialisation in the early years, particularly for three to seven year-olds? Secondly, what will the role of head teachers be in this slightly complex set-up where, on school premises, there will be not just an expansion of nursery classes but also the provision of childcare for younger children? What responsibility will head teachers have to take for what is going on on their premises in relation to childminders, private providers of one kind or another or voluntary organisations? Certainly, parents will imagine that head teachers have some responsibility for what is happening on their premises. Lastly, what work is being done to integrate the educational aspect of provision with the childcare aspects of provision? The Minister has rightly said that it is important for the development of children that this expansion takes place, but that expansion must bring with it high standards of provision. Indeed, the Statement says it is the Government’s priority to provide such high standards. Could the Minister respond to those questions?

My noble friend is right that having sufficient well-qualified staff is one of the biggest challenges for developing the entitlement in early years. That is why, as I outlined earlier, we have a national recruitment campaign, we are piloting whether financial incentives will boost recruitment in early years, we have skills boot camps for early years that lead to an accelerated apprenticeship, we have the new T-level, and Skills England will look at the sector to see what more qualifications we need to have in place. We are providing additional flexibility for childminders to help to care for children and to come into childminding through the childminder start-up scheme. The DfE currently supports a pipeline of early years teachers into the sector by funding early years initial teacher training and developing an undergraduate early years teacher degree apprenticeship to support early years leaders and teachers to earn while they learn. My noble friend is right that the range of provision within a primary school is a challenge for a head teacher, but we also heard from the noble Lord, Lord Storey, some of the benefits that head teachers will find from having that early start for children, with all that it brings to their development. On the quality and scope of early years, we made some announcements last week about ensuring that, as we develop the scale of the provision, we do not lose quality through new provisions around the early years foundation stage. We will also want to continue thinking about how we can ensure that the highest quality of learning happens during that stage. We will undoubtedly have more to say about that as we develop the quality and extent of early years care.

My Lords, I very much welcome this Statement, especially the section that reads: “The Government believe that all children deserve access to a brilliant early education, regardless of who they are, where they come from or their parents’ income”. The Minister will share my concern about young children who either are not registered at nursery school or are registered but rarely attend. What steps might be taken to monitor what happens to those children, who should be in school but are not?

The noble Lord makes a very important point. We have already said, more broadly, that we intend to bring forward provisions in the children and well-being bill for a children’s register for those outside schools. However, in the changes that we announced last week to the safeguarding provisions in the early years foundation scheme, we are also intending, after consultation, to introduce a new provision that will ensure better follow-up of children who have been registered with nurseries and who then do not attend, in the way in which the noble Lord suggests.

My Lords, I remind the House of my registered interest as a non-executive board member at Ofsted. The Minister will be aware that this landscape can be complex for parents to navigate. She talked about communications, but can she say a bit more about what the Government will do to ensure that all parents who have entitlement for their youngest children get the provision to which they are entitled? Might they be working with the family hubs and health visiting teams to have a strategic approach to communications on this?

The noble Baroness makes a very important point: that when there is a new entitlement, parents should understand what they are entitled to and be supported to find the places that support their children, which is why we will continue to publicise this. We will also, as she rightly says, find the other routes to ensuring that parents understand what their entitlements are. The next time that I am doing a media round on this, I will redouble my efforts so that I do not disappoint the noble Baronesses opposite.

My Lords, the most formative childcare for most children is of course provided by parents and families themselves. What plans do the Government have to make it easier for grandparents to care for their children and what plans they have, if any, to build on the transferable allowances introduced by the coalition Government?

The noble Lord is absolutely right that grandparents quite often play a very important role in supporting their children and grandchildren. I will take away his exhortations about support for grandparents and perhaps return to that matter directly with him when I have found out more about it.

My Lords, further to the questions about the workforce, the point has been made that it is about more than just giving an adequate salary for those in childcare; it is about recognition. The Minister referred in her reply to status and staff development. What steps are being taken to develop a proper career structure so that this field of education can compete with the rest of the education field in having a well-defined career structure for people to aim at?

The noble Lord is right; it is of course about reward, but it is also about progression and recognition. We have worked hard already to try to reset our relationship with staff across the education system. Over the coming weeks and months, the Government will set out further plans for reform to ensure that the workforce feels supported and valued. We want a system that celebrates and supports early years carers and embeds it into our wider education system. Alongside the work I have already outlined on recruitment, recognition and status is something that we will want to return to in the early years strategy as we develop it.

My Lords, to what extent does my noble friend the Minister consider that this welcome expansion will further the Government’s mission to break down the barriers to opportunity?

My noble friend makes a very important point. As I suggested earlier, childcare provision is good for parents because it provides them with opportunities to work and supports them with the cost of living. Most importantly—my right honourable friend the Secretary of State is adamant about this—high-quality early years education provision ensures that children get the very best possible start. It helps to overcome disadvantage in their home lives; it helps to identify special educational needs earlier, and it sets children up to learn. That is why it will be an absolute commitment of this Government. We were pleased to be able to outline last week the next stage of our development in this area.

My Lords, could the Minister of State say something about the importance of the status of people who work in early years?

Absolutely. The name of our recruitment campaign to encourage more people to come and work in this area is “Do Something Big”. Our argument is that there is little that you can do that is more important for changing somebody’s life than working with them in their very earliest years, whether through caring or through early years education and development. That is why the investment that this Government are putting in is so important and why we will celebrate the people who carry out that really important role.

My Lords, is it not also the case with the staffing of early years that there may be a staff surplus in some parts of the country? One has seen the statistical collapse in the number of young children in the inner London area, yet places such as Oxfordshire have apparently double the number of children than childcare places. Is part of the strategy to enable people already in this sector to relocate?

The noble Baroness makes a very important point. I am not sure that it is for the Government forcibly to relocate staff in this area, but let me take that back to those working on the childcare strategy as we think about how to reform this as a place to work and ensure that it is a positive place to work. We seek to meet demand where it is needed, because not only are there shortages of staff in some areas but there are shortages of provision. We will certainly make sure that we are focusing support on those areas that most need both the staff and the provision.

My Lords, I am pleased to hear the Minister speak about the importance of the workforce. Will the Government bear in mind that it is important to include the employment of young men as nursery nurses as well as young women? Many years ago, my son was one of a very small handful of men who qualified under the old NNEB rules. Lots of the children in nursery at that time had very disjointed families and did not have a good male figure within their household. Sometimes the male nursery nurse was the only stable male person they came across. That may not be so much the case now, in terms of the sorts of children who will find their way into good nursery care, but it is important to bear in mind that men as well as women can be very good at this job.

My noble friend eloquently outlines the enormous difference that can be made to a child’s start in life by the security and development that they can get from any early years worker. She is absolutely right that this is a job that men do extremely well and should be encouraged into doing. For some children who have not had the benefit of having those sorts of role models in their family lives, they will probably be fundamentally important for their success later on in life.

My Lords, one of the last Labour Government’s great achievements was the introduction of the Sure Start scheme, but, as my noble friend will know, many Sure Start centres have been closed. I am often asked what our Government’s position is on Sure Start. Could my noble friend perhaps say something about it?

One of the very last contributions that I made in the House of Commons before I came face to face with the electorate in Redditch was to suggest that I feared that a future Conservative Government might dismantle our Sure Start programme. I was jeered at the time, yet sadly I was right. In recent years we have seen, through some of the longitudinal analysis that was done on Sure Start, the impact that it had on children’s lives. I am afraid I cannot at this time undertake to reinstate the scale and significance of the last Labour Government’s Sure Start scheme, but I can say that recognising the way in which all those elements work in a child’s life—childcare, early years, health and family support—will be a very important way that, across this Government, we think about our future plans to support children to have the very best start in life.

My Lords, the Minister mentioned the creation of a children’s register —yet another register that we are creating when we have already set up so many over the years. If she casts her mind back to the previous Labour Government, one of the major initiatives we had was to create an identity system for each person and child in the country. We increasingly see that that need still has to be addressed, particularly for problems with immigration, yet we now have a different approach by the new Labour Government. Although I recognise that this is rather wide of her brief, I wonder whether she would care to bear in mind that there is a case to be made for a simple approach to this. We ought to be trying to create coalitions where we work together to create a system that will give us greater data about everyone, including children, and which would be far more efficient than the present system, where we create separate systems all the time.

My noble friend tempts me to relive my days developing the national identity scheme and, in fact, having one of the very first identity cards issued by the last Labour Government. However, I will not go down that route. I have some sympathy with his point about around the range of different ways in which we now ask people to prove their identity. The intention behind the register for those children who are out of school is very much about safeguarding and ensuring that children do not get lost to our system, as has sadly become increasingly the case over recent years and which was exacerbated by Covid. This has a very special and important child safeguarding intention, which is why it is a legitimate scheme in its own right.