With widespread reports of nursery fee hikes, you’d be forgiven for forgetting the jubilation parents felt across England when the Government announced an expansion of the ‘free’ funded childcare hours back in March 2023.
Once the policy is fully rolled out, working families will receive 30 hours of free childcare for children from 9 months of age for 38 weeks a year.
Childcare plays a key role in enabling parents to work contributing to economic growth and pulling families out of poverty. As one mother we work with explained:
“Childcare is one thing I find really difficult, I don't have family to help with my children, so I have to depend on a childminder, but I'm determined to work. It’s something I really want to do. I'm starting a new job, so my childcare costs are going to go up.”
At Save the Children, we welcome the investment in children from the Government, but the focus on working families risks others missing out on the benefits childcare provides.
Good quality childcare improves children’s outcomes in the early years and beyond. Given the Education Policy Institute has shown that 40% of the attainment gap – which persists and grows as children move through school – is already evident by the age of five, ensuring childcare is high quality and accessible to the most marginalised children is essential.
Families reflect on the childcare offer
One mother who is unable to work due to poor health explained how childcare was helping her family:
"My partner works. So we get the 30 free hours and we also get the 85% childcare costs back because my son has to be in nursery full time [due to my health] it's safer for him to be in nursery during the day. And that helps us so much."
England isn’t alone in needing to transform its childcare sector. Estonia and Ireland have reformed their childcare systems from a place of crisis to affordable, inclusive and child-centered systems.
Save the Children UK's vision
In 2022, together with IPPR, we set out a plan to deliver a Childcare Guarantee – universal, affordable childcare for all families from the end of parental leave to the end of primary school. Our plan would increase incomes, narrow the attainment gap, boost tax returns and GDP as well as narrow the gender pay gap, and lead to the creation of 130,000 jobs in the childcare sector.
There’s no denying there’s a lot of work to do, but there’s still time to fix this.
The Government must close the current funding gap ahead of the September roll out, with a focus on the 3- and 4-year-old offer alongside a workforce strategy.
The families missing out
As a key step towards a Childcare Guarantee, eligibility rules need to be reviewed to ensure key groups aren’t left out of the funded childcare offer. Namely, those in education and training, disabled single parents and single parent carers, and families with no recourse to public funds. Children in these families are missing out, placing additional strain on parents and meaning children who would benefit the most from the childcare offer are missing out.
As one single mother we work with explained:
“If you're a single parent like me, and you can't work because you have a condition, my kids are not entitled to 30 hours. My MS is back to being active and aggressive but I can't afford to send her for more than the 15 hours that she gets, but then I don't get the rest. It’s a vicious cycle.”
Parties across the political spectrum acknowledge the importance of childcare for economic growth, but we must go beyond this to ensure childcare supports the foundations of lifelong learning for all children.
Improving funding rates and addressing staffing shortages alongside a gradual expansion of support to all children – starting with the most marginalised – will create a world class childcare system that reduces poverty and enhances inclusion. This will bring us closer to the end goal: a universal childcare guarantee for all.
